To rage (against the dying of the light)
by YellowFlicker
Summary: She was gone. Gone from him forever… and he couldn't even fathom the meaning of it, of a world without her in it. Devastation couldn't touch him, even though he was sitting at the eye of its storm. He had known grief and he had known fear but this… this was… wordless. Nobody had ever told him that ruin felt so much like death. (season4 speculation)
1. 1

_1\. So Eden sank to grief (nothing gold can stay)_

 _Nature's first green is gold,_

 _Her hardest hue to hold._

 _Her early leaf's a flower;_

 _But only so an hour._

 _Then leaf subsides to leaf._

 _So Eden sank to grief,_

 _So dawn goes down to day._

 ** _Nothing gold can stay_** _._

 _Robert Frost_

Thea runs like she never has before in her life. She is not running for _her own_ life though; she is running for someone else's.

Her brother's screaming still echoes in her ears and she knows that it will be seared into her brain forever. And now they're not even together: different vehicles, different parts of the plan, different objectives. Except _Oliver_ had been the one to watch the love of his life die in front of him, and Thea hadn't even been there for him.

 _Goddamit!_

Thea is breathless by the time she gets to the lair. She's just at the door when she almost smacks straight into Roy, who catches her, but also stops her from going around him.

"Roy! Move, I need…"

"Wait. Just wait a second Thea, please." his voice is gravelly, gentle in a cautions way, like he's afraid of what comes next. He looks as if he is three seconds away form a fresh wave of tears: they're right there clinking to his lashes, eyes shiny and red to match his blotched face. And it's the sight of his pain so raw and real that stops Thea, in every way a person can be stopped. Hope ( _and leg-numbing fear_ ) had been driving her. Up until now, Thea had told herself that maybe, just _maybe_ , there was a chance - no matter how small - that they were wrong. That this was just some giant mistake and Felicity was fine somewhere. Captive, but fine. And that they would rally and make a plan and bust her _out_ , because that is what they _do_! Team Arrow _fights_!

But she can't keep up pretending, not when Roy is looking at her like that.

Fresh tears pour down, trailing over the dried tracks of the old ones and Thea can do nothing to help it. She hasn't cried like this since… since before Malcolm. Since before Oliver came back, four years ago.

"Roy…" It's almost a plea.

Roy knows what she's pleading for. He can't give her the words, can't say it aloud, but he doesn't have to. It's all over his face.

"But how can you be _sure_?" She insists, gritting her teeth against the reality of it. That unconquerable fire in her fights back against the abysmal, against the horrifying, even now. Because Thea Queen is many things but a quitter is not one of them and she will not make the mistake of assuming anything. She has lost so many people; but she knows just as many who had been left for dead and then returned. It really was enough to give one the willingness to hope even in the darkest of moments.

But Roy's hands are gentle as they reach for hers.

She resists him, angrily.

"He is her father, Roy. Her _father_! Felicity is his _only daughter_! He wouldn't… he _wouldn't_!"

And she speaks from experience there. Malcolm Merlyn, her so called father, damaged her - some might say irreparably. He made a killer out of her, his own daughter, because he was twisted and selfish and because he had evil growing in him like a vine. But even though he had put her life in danger and set off a catastrophe they had barely escaped from, Thea knew that Malcolm Merlyn, immoral as he was, would never raise deal a fatal blow to her with his own hand. He _wouldn't_. And neither would Damien Darhk – whoever the fucker was. It doesn't even matter if Darhk really is the devil reincarnate, because even the devil loves his children. ( _Right_?) He must!

"Thea, listen to me." Roy's grip on her hands tightens… and she fears. Because there is anger in Roy's face now, burning hot and irrepressible. And there is despair there too, of the kind she has never seen in his face before. "I saw it happen Thea. I _saw_ it with my own eyes."

The whole scene is burned behind his eyelids and will feed his nightmares forever, Roy knows it. Even as he says the exhausting words, he sees it.

He sees Felicity grabbed by her ponytail, the gun pointed right at her temple. He sees it as if in slow motion, the way she had stared Darhk in the face without even glancing at the barrel of the gun pointed at her – and then looked away, dismissing him, like he wasn't worth her time. ( _The utter calm of that decision had chilled Roy's blood_ ) She'd looked at _them_ instead: her friends, trapped on the other side of the floor, steel bars and bullet-proof glass separating them from her and half an army of HIVE agents. A barrier _Felicity_ had put up to keep them out; to keep them safe. The same one that kept them from getting to her...

Oliver had been the first one to understand. Oliver, Digg… one of them; both at the same it – it didn't really matter. Dimly, Roy remembers hearing Oliver screaming her name, but it hadn't really registered. His eyes had been fixed on Felicity, the sharp pain of the gash on his leg bringing her face into startling clarity, even as everything else faded at the edges. Roy remembers her expression perfectly, ( _absolutely self-possessed and utterly terrified at the same time_ ), the little tremulous smile on her lips, painted battle-red. She had been so scared, but she hadn't looked away from them.

A revelation comes to him like a slap at the back of his head: Felicity had _known_. The magnitude of this fact sinks into Roy's brain in that precise moment, just as he holds Thea's hands tightly in his. Felicity had never been the kind of person that built people up in her head: she lived in the world – in _their_ world - with her eyes wide open. She had _known_ her father would kill her, known this with a stone-cold clarity that had been a far cry from the denial the rest of them had lived in for months. Oh, they'd known Darhk wouldn't hesitate to kill any of them – they had picked up enough bodies from the streets, dug out enough of his bullets from their own limbs to be certain of that. None of them however, had ever thought he would kill his own daughter in cold blood.

Was it ironic that Felicity had been the only one to see the truth of that man ( _and accept it for what it was_ ) before any of them had? Had that been the real reason why Felicity had not been surprised and disbelieving like the rest of them, when the click of the safety being lifted had echoed absurdly loud in the chaos around them? There had been no shock on _her_ face; she hadn't even blinked. _(Was that courage? Or was it something else…_ ) In that moment, she had been living far _beyond_ fear; living just to look at them. And Oliver, maybe that was what had made him say her name that way, like it was the last word he'd ever say that would mean anything. He had read the truth on her face, and he'd known too.

( _And all Roy wants to know now is for how long she'd felt that way. Why she hadn't asked for his help; or if she had and he'd been too stupid to realize it_.)

Darhk had pulled the trigger without even blinking, without looking away from the back of Felicity's head. ( _She hadn't look at him in death. A choice so deliberate it was terrifying, because even in death, Felicity had owned herself completely and Roy couldn't imagine ever being that strong_ ) The gunshot had gone off, Felicity's head had jerked to the side, blood and brain spattering the granite floor and the control panel before her body even made contact with the ground.

He had jerked backwards as if the bullet had been aimed for him, but he hadn't had time to process it, because Oliver's roar had rattled the walls of hard steel around them and Roy had felt it shuddering all the way to his bones. He'd thrown himself at the steel bars even as the elevator shuttered down 36 floors, like he expected them to give, almost broke Digg's hand when he tried to make him stop. It was only after that that Oliver gained some measure of awareness. He quieted down completely then; didn't even twitch anymore - which in Roy's book, was way scarier.

In all honesty, Roy couldn't say he paid too much attention because he had been all too busy crying like a kid himself.

As they retreated, Ttere had been a shitload of people on the line for the status update: the Black Canary, the White Canary, Nyssa al Ghul, the Flash, the ATOM, Firestorm, Jesus fuck knew who else… and all they had heard was the silence of static for those that didn't make it out alive. And maybe this made Roy a bad person, but honestly, the only person he could think in that moment had been Felicity. They heard Nyssa talking, in slow, rounded out words of a foreign language Roy had no idea about, and the words had sounded like a prayer. Her tone had been heavy, sorrowful and someone on the other side of the line sobbed before the link disconnected. Nobody interrupted the daughter of the demon as she said her prayers for the fallen.

Roy hadn't known how to tell her to shut up. He really would rather never talk, ever, honestly. He'd rather not _think_.

But once in the lair, Oliver had just dropped his bow and walked away from them, to one of the back rooms. Digg kept looking at his hands blankly ( _they were shaking, even grasped tightly into fists as they were_ ; _Lyla sitting close to him, without speaking, without touching_ ). Sara patched Roy up, her eyes misty and honest to god, Roy preferred the pain of a stab wound to the one that was tearing him from the inside.

Nobody was doing anything. There was a strange stillness in the air, a sort of calm before the shitstorm. They were waiting – though Roy had no idea for what. Personally, Roy waited for his breathing to calm down, for the hole in his chest to abate ( _knowing it wouldn't_ ); waited for Thea to show up, so that he could do whatever she needed him to do. When her tracker told him she was five miles out, he up in the lobby to intercept her, because he knew Thea – he knew that she would vault down those steps and run straight to Oliver. But Roy really didn't think that was a smart thing to do.

So there he is now, looking at Thea's tearstained face, as she insists that Damien Darhk, no matter how evil, would never kill Felicity because she was his blood. She was his only child. And maybe it made sense in Thea's head – she and Felicity had bonded these past 6 months over the whole _'our dads are supervillains'_ thing, because only Felicity could take something that dark and make a terrible joke out of it.

But there was nothing funny about this now.

"I'm so sorry Thea." Roy gasps out, not even noticing that his tears had already picked up, only reaching out to brush away hers.

Thea shakes her head a little, still unable ( _unwilling_ ) to believe it. She _keeps_ not believing it when they walk forward into their new base ( _the lair Felicity had set up for them, the one she had had to come back to because her_ father _was kidnapping her_ friends _!_ ). She doesn't believe it as she looks around to the destroyed people around her, not until Ray Palmer, red-eyed and exhausted, inhales sharply and draws the attention of everyone in the room to where he is sitting.

Jon snaps to his feet immediately, like an elastic being released. "What? What is it?"

In three strides has reached Palmer by the screens. What he sees there knocks the breath out of him – out of them all.

Roy blindly reaches of a chair. His knees give out as if they're made of water. He watches Thea's eyes go wide as she leans in to look, tears falling heavy down her cheeks. Digg is _vibrating_ with barely-contained violence, fists balled tight against this side. Ray Palmer is so pale he might just pass out.

They all stare as the security recording from inside the HIVE base makes it to their screens. ' _Un-hackable_ ', Felicity had called them. Which meant that this is Damien's present to them. Ray's hands are auspiciously off the keyboards, as if he didn't dare touch them; as if the intent behind this video would contaminate him if he did.

They watch as Felicity makes her way into the control room with a few surviving ARGUS tech-wizzes ( _whom she has personally selected and it had been so funny, cause she was nice to them same as she was to everyone, but they all stood a little straighter when she talked to them_ ). They dismantle the servers, running HIVE's operational algorithms to the ground while opening up the cells and releasing the prisoners that had been captured and experimented on like lab rats in the past five months.

She had tried so hard to get away. Digg's lessons hadn't gone lost on her. But in the end it had been useless.

 _'…_ _no choice to make.'_ Roy had heard her say that once.

They had missed this part: the part where Damien Darhk tried to override her virus and failed. The part where he shot every single person Felicity had gone into that serve room with, while she screamed ( _there has been no negotiation involved; just punishment_ ). They had seen the bodies later, but not the executions. Roy feels his insides contort and he is sure he will puke at any moment. He sees Darhk turn to Felicity, gun in hand and the other reaching for her hair and he closes his eyes against that sight. He can't see this again; he cann _ot_. But he still knows the exact moment Felicity is shot; knows it by the way Thea sobs, deeply and openly. And he sees it again in his mind's eye ( _a waking nightmare_ ): Felicity's body hitting the stark granite, blood blooming around her head, staining her hair red, red… Thea starts crying in earnest and there is a crash somewhere to Roy's left ( _later he'll realize Digg had shoved the monitors off the table in a rare fit of rage_ ). A sharp pain splits his skull, and Roy drops his head in his hands, groaning.

God, how could this happen?

Thea stands up and with a voice that is a lot shakier than she means it to, she demands to know where Oliver is. Nobody answers her at first. But then she asks again, stronger this time and Ray points her to the back rooms. She goes there, knowing that she is about to find herself in a world of pain but pushing forward anyway.

The room is dark but she doesn't dare turn on the light. He is just sitting there, still as stone and Thea feels like a child all of a sudden. All she has been through, everyone she has lost - none of that has prepared her for this. Not Slade, not Malcolm, not even dying and coming back. Her heart is falling in shreds because she feels Oliver's pain coming off him in waves, crashing into her. He is practically vibrating with it, though he is as still as the column he is leaning against. He doesn't even breathe differently, doesn't flinch when she kneels in front of him. He's not there at all and god she's so scared. So scared and useless and helpless. But Oliver has always protected her, _always_. Always been there for her, even when she pushed him away in the worst fucking possible manner. She won't leave him alone in this.

She reaches out, takes in hand. He's so cold that Thea almost flinches - the word 'catatonic' bangs around her skull like a grenade with its pin out. But Thea Queen is Moira's daughter and if there was one thing her mother taught her, is to know no fear when it comes to her family. So Thea reaches for her brother again, takes his hand in both of hers, fits herself to his side. He doesn't move, but doesn't push her away either and Thea forces her brain to accept that as a positive sign.

He is there and he is staying, even if she has to dedicate her every breath till her dying day to make sure of it. She won't lose her brother.

Oliver's heartbeat is fast and irregular. His breaths are sharp and short. He shivers from time to time but doesn't say a word. Tears don't come for her brother, he doesn't break. There are a few times when Thea thinks he will, but it doesn't happen. ( _She doesn't admit it even to herself how much his stillness scares her_ ) When he finally does get up ( _stumbling_ ) and walks out, Thea follows him. He goes into the other room, takes in the grief-stricken faces around him, of people that weren't even _beginning_ to mourn - and then starts for the monitors, shoves Felicity's USB in it and orders Palmer to analyze every piece of data she gathered. Everything.

"Felicity's virus just uploaded. As of now, we have access to HIVE's movements for at least 12 hours. Palmer…" But Ray just nods and points at the multiple screens where, already, there is a constant streaming of code that so fast that Thea doesn't even catch it. Oliver takes a deep breath, steadying. "I want to know HIVE's movements. I want to know where Darhk is and what he has done with her body."

The whole room sucks in a breath when he says that, looking at him as if he's a bomb about to explode. Thea freezes, but she doesn't need to look: she knows exactly what Oliver is planning.

"I know what you're thinking, Oliver… What makes you think Merlyn will agree?" Digg asks, arms linked rightly over his chest. And if everyone expected a debate, they were surprised, because just like Felicity had been past the point of pain, so is Digg past the point of grief. ( _And maybe it's a testament to how far gone they are, that Digg doesn't even protest_ )

"He will." Oliver says darkly, not even a hint of uncertainty in his tone. "Or I'll kill him."

"Killing Malcolm Merlyn isn't the problem." Nyssa hisses, stepping into the fold. "The problem is finding him. Nanda Parbat was been abandoned almost 11 months ago. The League has gone underground; unless they want to be found, you won't be able to."

Oliver Queen turns hard eyes to her. He is not the first man to give Nyssa that kind of look, but being so familiar with the pain he is in, knowing what it means to have one's heart ripped away from one's chest, Nyssa decides to tolerate the insolence. It only lasts a moment anyway, because those cold eyes slide away from her, and to his sister.

And Thea knows deep down that her brother is not angry at her, that he's just angry and hurting and he is trying to keep breathing any way he can, but those eyes of his - so familiar and so foreign at the same time - they scare her. They remind her of the way he used to be those first few weeks when he came back from the island. Cold; detached. Unreachable.

It doesn't matter anyway. What matters is that her brother needs something from her and Thea knows exactly what that is. She nods. Thea can get to Malcolm Merlyn the way nobody else can and they both know it. At this point, there is nothing Thea wouldn't do to make her brother even remotely right again. She steps out of the room a moment later.

This has to work she tells herself; it must.

 _It will_.

Because if there is anyone that can fight against death and win, it's Oliver.


	2. 2

_2\. Hold me close (with blood on your hands)_

 _Hold me close with blood on your hands.  
I want to see your naked bones.  
I want your twisted, ugly truth._

 _theflyingpeach_

In the end it doesn't work. None of it does. Because Malcolm has been working with Damien all along ( _and Oliver breaks half their apartment when he finds out_ ). They don't know why, they don't even know when it started. Truth is, they don't know anything - but Sara and Nyssa go with the promise to find out, and Tatsu pokes at her contacts in the undergrounds of Tokyo for information, since Japan seems to be Darhk's last stop before America. Lyla is trying to put a ruined ARGUS back together, after the disaster that HIVE infiltration proved to be. ( _Deadshot wasn't the best of company, but he could shoot the wings off a fly, so he got to stay, as long as he didn't make anyone want to punch his jaw off_ )

They have been running ops for a whole month, chasing down leads, but it's like looking for a needle in a haystack – in the pitch black. Whatever they do, HIVE seems to be a dozen steps ahead of them. There is no break to be caught anywhere, even though they desperately need one, because the Pit can bring back the dead, but what happened to Sara is proof enough that the longer you wait, the more extreme the effect of bringing someone back is.

Then one month stretches into two and they keep hitting HIVE bases, finding new captives and releasing them, but they have no trace of Darhk anywhere and nobody knows what he did with his daughter's body because up until now, they have heard a dozen different stories. ( _The man who said she'd been burned had barely escaped having his face smashed in. Just barely, because Oliver caught himself in time before he killed him_.) Oliver…

Oliver is slowly starting to unravel right in front of Thea's eyes. She can see life draining out of him, leaving only rage behind. He barely eats, trains like a machine, sleeps when his nightmares let him. His eyes are always over-bright and the bruises under them are getting alarming. The rage that he lets loose once he's in the field scares Thea at first; he is brutal and vicious in the violence he causes. It almost makes him reckless, and for a time Thea got heart palpitations every time he put on the hood, because a part of her became convinced he honestly _wanted_ to die. Until Digg told her not to worry – that he'd seen this Oliver before. He wasn't suicidal; he was just regressing. Somehow, that didn't sound that much better in Thea's perspective, but then again, the last time _Thea_ had had to deal with this kind of grief, she had handed herself over to a mass murderer, so really, who was she to judge…

She wonders, almost absently, if Oliver had felt the way she feels now, every time Thea had been hurting. She can feel his pain so acutely; as if it's her own. She sees the darkness creeping in along the edges, seeping into her brother's soul, making every moment a battle.

The most painful part is that Oliver is trying _so hard_ to fight it. Every day, he crawls out of his thoughts, battling for every steady breath, struggling with teeth and nails just to _be_ there. The strain it causes in him is almost more than Thea can take. She honestly does not believe she would be able to stand it, if she watched him try any harder. ( _Sometimes he stares into space for hours and she doesn't know how to speak to him, or even if she should. It's like he's lost his heart… and maybe he has_.) She finds herself crying sometimes, not for herself but for her brother, because someone must. Someone has to cry for Ollie and his shattered soul, because Thea doesn't believe he has seen her brother shed a single tear since Felicity's blood stained his world red.

But three months become four and then they become six, and they _still_ have nothing… until _it_ happens.

Their kidnappings alerts starts to go off. The patters that had once seemed random are now perfectly legible, because Felicity had strung up an algorithm or something ( _magic, it was magic to Thea, for all she understood of it_ ) so now they know that when people go missing, they aren't just _missing_ , but rather but turning up in HIVE's cells. This all happens just about at the same time as a string of break-ins undermines the Applied Sciences Divisions of major corporations. And it's terrible, but it's also a solid lead - something they haven't had in a while. They manage to narrow down three possibilities of where the next hit will be and Thea watches her brother move with newfound purpose ( _the way he always does when they catch even a hint of HIVE's involvement in anything_ ). Barry and his team take one possible target; Team Arrow the other ( _which just so happens to be Palmer Tech_ ), with Oliver running point, Digg as his wingman and Roy and Thea covering exits ( _they go in strong now, never underestimating what HIVE is capable of_ ). They divide their areas, take up positions, and wait.

They are sneaky, Thea notices as she watches the figures in black move through the shadows, silent like cats. She has no idea how they manage to bypass the security, and Thea knows for a _fact_ that it's not as easy as they make it look, because hello, Felicity designed that system herself and it took Palmer, the self-proclaimed genius extraordinaire, about 6 hours to override it. It takes those guys 15 seconds and it's fucking annoying ( _and hellishly scary, but Thea doesn't think like that once she puts on the mask_ ). It's no surprise that it bothers Ollie as much as it does either. His low growl - he actually _growls_ – rumbles in Thea's ear and she knows even before he moves that her brother is going to tear through these guys like a hot knife through butter, because Ollie takes things like someone overriding Felicity's systems really, _really_ personally. He hasn't killed anyone yet, but sometimes Thea catches people – like Laurel and Palmer – exchanging these loaded looks after missions and she knows they think it might happen one of these days. Thea wishes they would believe her when she tells them not to sweat it. Ollie is not going to kill anyone. Until he holds Felicity's body in his hands and knows beyond the shadow of any earthly ( _and unearthly_ ) doubt that she is _gone_ , forever, and there is nothing he can do to have her back. Until that moment, he will still be _Felicity's_ Oliver, and _that_ Oliver is a hero… It's probably part of the reason why he's trying so hard to be one, day in, day out, even if the strain of it cracks him a little more every day.

Thea doesn't hold out hope for Damien Darhk though. If Ollie doesn't kill that fucker, _Thea_ will. And if she fails, Digg will put a bullet straight through the man's skull… and then maybe Thea can convince him to set fire to the corpse, just to be sure, cause Darhk was like a vampire out of some nightmare ( _the whole stake through the heart started to sound every more appealing_ ).

But back to the sneaky B&Es. They know how to use the cover of darkness to the fullest, but unfortunately for them – and thank to Cisco Ramon and his fantastic brain - Thea's mask doesn't have what one might call ' _standard_ ' night-vision. ( _also, after coming back from the pit, Thea has had the senses of a wild animal, but that's kind of a secret_ ). She loosens two of the thinnest arrows she has on them ( _they slice the air so silently that not even her brother was able to sense them coming_ ), filled with a paralyzing agent so strong it would knock out a horse. Then she helps Roy knock out his, because hey, these guys are tough nuggets where hand-to-hand is concerned and Thea can actually blow some steam with them. She is fucking _enthusiastic_ when it comes to breaking bones even though at some part of her brain, she knows she shouldn't be. That there is some moral code somewhere that tells her she shouldn't _enjoy_ this. But she is also fresh out of fucks to give, and has been running out of patience for HIVE bullshit ever since three of the last agents they managed to catch, killed themselves right in front of their eyes before they were transferred them over to Skeleton-ARGUS for questioning.

Thea is in the process of wrapping a bow on the third guy when one word cuts through her concentration like a whip.

" _Felicity_?"

The choked note of Ollie's voice, the way it breaks around that single word, makes Thea shiver. She looks at Roy wide eyed and terrified and they both start running at the same time, just a second before the bullets start flying.

 _Oh god, oh god, what is happening?_

They find what is going on when Digg orders them to retreat: he is dragging a protesting Oliver to the van, hauls him inside. Her brother has three bullets in him, he can't chase anything - but Thea can. The way he trusts her to do it fills Thea with the kind of fire that makes her believe she would be able to bust through walls to get this done.

Eventually, it doesn't require that, as much as a high-speed chase, a bit of the 'bullets and explosive arrows' distraction from Roy - enough to give Thea the chance to place a tracer on the van; and a fake accident to top it off. Thea flips Ollie's Ducati very convincingly ( _the fractured wrist, busted collarbone and hella-bruised shoulder are a small price to pay_ ) just a second after she puts a tracking magnet on the black Sedan. The fact that she shoved one of Palmer's tracking-nanite needles straight into one guy's lung is a bonus. They'll have to butterfly him open to dig that thing out, so wherever he's going, Team Arrow will follow.

During all this, Thea does not see anyone that might remotely look like Felicity, but then again, she was a little preoccupied staying alive. ( _and a smaller voice also tell her that she can't be sure Ollie was right either. She remembers a time when she saw her mother's face everywhere – it had never made Moira Queen any less dead than she was._ ) She isn't surprised however that, when she gets back to the lair half hanging from Roy's shoulder, Ollie and Digg are arguing.

"I _saw_ her Digg."

"I _know_ Oliver. I was there." Digg grits out, just as he finishes bandaging the nasty bruise on his side. Those have to be some cracked ribs under there, minimum, Thea thinks as she measures the degree of bruising. Thank god for body-armor or those bruises would have been gaping holes.

"I saw her too." Digg continues, this time calmer… and definitely sadder "And I saw her see _you_ : you have three bullet-shaped bruises to prove it."

Thea stops in her tracks at that, mouth gone suddenly dry.

Roy finds his voice first. "You mean it _really_ was her? It really was Felicity? And… and she _shot_ you?"

Oliver looks at them, and Thea could cry because, god she hasn't seen that look in his eyes in _six months_ and she was starting to think she may have lost her brother forever, but no… there he is…

"She shot _you_?" Thea repreats, drastically changing the accented word in that question, because it was important to make this clear. "How is that possible?"

"I don't know." Ollie answers, so softly that Thea barely hears it. But then he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, shakes his head minutely. "It doesn't matter."

Thea steps forward, winces, and Digg is there, taking her elbow and gently guiding her to sit, so that he can look her over. Long live the Queens and their mania for getting beat up. Felicity would say something like that, but she'd say it better. She'd make a smile out of it.

"How can it not matter?" Thea insists, because if that had really been Felicity and she had shot _Oliver_ …

No, that didn't even make sense. That was an oxymoron if Thea had ever heard one. Because Felicity - the Felicity Thea remembers, the girl who had helped her keep herself together when Thea had been fresh out of the Pit and barely knew who she was; the girl who Thea had spent countless hours talking to and who knew some of her deepest secrets and burdens - _that_ Felicity, she would die before she hurt Oliver. Case in point, she _had!_

"Ollie… are you sure…"

His eyes sear when he opens them to look at her.

"You think I would be confused about that, Thea? You think I've forgotten what she looks like, what she…" he goes from growling, to his voice almost breaking. Thea watches her brother take a deep breath, trying to bring him temper to heed. "You think I wouldn't know Felicity, if she were standing a dozen feet away from me?"

Thea shakes her head, tired and aching and so, so sad.

"Oliver, I think we both know that Felicity would never hurt you, ever. And whoever you saw tonight…"

But Oliver is already up and moving.

"That's irrelevant." He interrupts as he moves to the monitors so fast she barely has the chance to hold on to him. "We need Palmer here to track that car."

"He is already on it. I called him when we were on pursuit." but nevertheless, Roy is out the door with his phone in his ear before he the words were even out of his mouth, calling again. Oliver ushers himself into the back room, his favorite hiding spot when the burning looks on his back got too irritating.

Left alone, Thea looks at John, searching for an explanation in the man who she knows always keeps a cool, head even when everything went to shit. But John Diggle only takes a deep breath and sags into a chair.

"I really don't know what to tell you Thea." He says, knowing what she means to ask.

"Was it really her John?" she asks in a whisper. The moment Digg takes before answering seems to last an eternity and Thea feels like she holds he breath the whole time.

"I think so, yeah." John finally says, a hand rubbing at his face as if it would make his thoughts clearer.

"B-but…" Thea staggers, frown darkening.

"I know."

"John, Felicity would never…"

"I _know_." Digg sighs, and then fixes his eyes on hers. "But she did. Point blank range, Thea. She got the order and didn't even hesitate. Her eyes…"

But John doesn't finish. He shakes his head and there is a sheen glassiness to them. But then Digg blinks and it's gone. Thea sucks one breath. And then another. When it becomes clear that Jon isn't going to add to that on his own volition, she prods.

"What… what do you mean? John, what does that mean?"

She watches John Diggle gulp, sorrow and hope mixing in his eyes.

"I don't think she had any idea who she was shooting at, Thea." He finally says and all the air in the room suddenly feels too thin for her lungs.

Thea remembers how disoriented she had been after they pulled her out of the pit, how angry and scared and confused. How her life kept coming to her in pieces, like a half remembered dream, and there was a darkness in her that pulled at the seams of her being, inciting her to violence. How, once she got her strength and bearing back, everyone that dared come into her personal space had felt like a threat and nobody seemed to be anyone in her eyes. She hadn't even known who Oliver was when she'd first seen him. ( _Thea had no memory of that at all – Felicity had told her, after_.)

 _Maybe… maybe…_

"Oh, this is bad…"

"Is it, though?" John asks, and it seems like he is talking more to himself than to her. "She is _alive_ , Thea."

"And how do you think that happened, John?" she snaps back. its not really a question, they both know that. And Thea thinks she has a pretty god idea wha happened to Felicity in the mean time. She knows better than anyone else how futile life feels, if there is nothing to tether you to the body you inhabit. If the purpose and the people that link you to your existence cannot fall into place, then you lived a life without true consciousness. You're just and empty shell, as easy to crumble as dry leaf. Life is useless when it's hollow and Thea knows this to the deepest of her marrow, because in the end, it had been Oliver's love that brought her back and not the Pit, not really. It had been the family he had surrounded himself with that _kept_ her alive when he wasn't there and it had been knowing he was happy and in love and finally _living_ , that kept her sane in the months afterwards; that guided her back to herself, back to rebuilding Thea Queen and deciding she could like that person.

And the hard fact here is that, even though she apparently lived and breathed, the Felicity her brother loved might very well still be dead. Because there was nothing that great about life, if there was nobody there to be alive _for_ …

But just as that thought crosses her mind, Thea shudders, because no, Felicity hadn't been alone, had she? She had been with Damien Darhk. Whatever had happened to her, whether in the Pit or anywhere else, Darhk had been there to see it through. And Thea can only imagine what a man like him could do with a blank-slated Felicity, all alone and scared, with no memory of who she was and reaching desperately for some thread to connect with life, with meaning…

Personally knowing the depths and ugliness of that vulnerability; having experienced the unparalleled _luck_ of going through it surrounded by people who cared about her deeply, tenderly... it made a white-hot rage flood Thea's veins on Felicity's behalf. If there was a single atom of justice in this universe, the smallest molecule of mercy, it would have been split apart by the sheer _unfairness_ of all this: that someone so fundamentally _good_ , someone who had shown her such gentleness when Thea needed it most, should be denied the very same so cruelly.

At the thought of that, at the thought of how scared Felicity must have been, how alone she must have felt, how hollow... it made Thea's heart skip a few beats. How keenly Oliver must feel this kind of pain, she wondered, and it almost brought tears to her eyes ( _because she knew her brother. He was so strong, he could bear almost anything; but the thought of Felicity's pain was usually what made his hands shake_ )

Was Felicity in pain? Did she even know what she was doing? Just by how many people she was missed; how fiercely she was loved?

 _So fucking unfair..._

As childish as the thought was, it rose from the deepest of Thea's heart. And this wasn't just injustice: it was deliberate pitilessness, and it fuelled Thea's hatred for absent fathers and their myopic, misanthropic, misogynistic way of caring, making it burn more ferociously than ever. Assuming that they cared at all; that they didn't just see you as another extension of their narcissistic self.

She scoffs, disgusted. Yeah, that was one assumption too many for Thea Queen.

He wakes with a jolt, violently wretched from his nightmare. In the darkness of the room, his furious blinking can't chase the shadows away, because – just for a split second - he thinks he hasn't woken at all and he's living and breathing his nightmare all over again.

Except there is no Felicity here, emerging for him from dark corners, vines of blackness around her wrists and ankles. He wishes there was… For one horrible moment, Oliver wishes she would haunt him, in any way she can. It would kill him, probably, or drive him mad, if he saw her that way. But _this_ way is not that much better and honestly, in the depths of nights, he would give anything, _anything_ , just to see her again. But that's the desperation talking; his selfishness rearing its fucking ugly head again. He doesn't mean that. That is not what he wanted for her. ( _Peace and happiness and love and light is what he wants for her…_ )

Oliver sits up; his t-shirt feels scratchy, his sweats uncomfortable and the wooden floor beneath his bare feet is cold. The sensations wake him up a little more, bring him back to reality and its tiny details. He breathes deep for a while, head hung between his hands.

It's too dark and he's too tired to chase away thoughts of her. She's too close to the surface this time ( _he saw her. He keeps repeating that to himself, it's his new mantra. He saw her and that... that is what is finally going to breaks him, isn't it?_ ) He's so tired... _Exhausted_...

He misses her, and feels it with the clarity of surrender. He misses all the moments with her he's been living without. Misses the cool movement of the sheets against her body as she slides over to him. The dip of the mattress, the curl of her around him, warm and real and alive; her hand, soothing, on his back; the kisses that used to start wherever she deemed easier to reach. Sometimes his thigh, sometimes his hip, his hand, his arm. It didn't matter where it started; she always pulled him down by her side again to kiss his lips.

He grasps his head in his hands and sobs, choking on his own pain.

He misses her. He misses _her_ ( _and feels it now, because he can. Because he saw her - she's not dead, he didn't kill her and he's going to get her back, but god does he miss her_ ); not her touch, or her words, or her smile, or her kiss. It's more than that. There is a whole Felicity-shaped space in the universe (in _him_ ) that is gone and its the _absence_ of her that hurt. Every second she is _not_ there, every word he doesn't hear her say, every look she doesn't get to give him… Sometimes, something bright moves at the at the periphery of his eye and he turns, heart stuttering in his chest, but it's never her. ( _Other times he stays very, very still, and he swears she hovers just at the corner of his eye, tilting her head at him just out of sight, flipping her pony with a teasing smile._ ) Every moment of every day that she should have been there has warped itself into another moment where she is _missing_ , and her absence keeps bleeding.

He is out of strength. Everything he has, he is pouring in the next step, the next goal, the next _breath_. He needs to find her, but hope within him is writhing with a new kid of fear. Oh, he won't give up. He _won't_ , not on her. Never. But in the pit of night, when he wakes and all his walls are down, when the Felicity-shaped gap in his world sears its presence right into his soul… Oliver just can't. Why pretend for the shadows? They don't care. He can fall apart on his own. Nobody here who needs him to be strong.

And maybe that's why he doesn't sense her. When he feels the bed move, he flinches, but realises it's Thea, because it smells like her. ( _ridiculous hope splinters the space between two heartbeats, sharply, that it's_ her; _but of course it's not. Of course_...)

Oliver looks over at his sister, wrapped in stripped pyjamas, looking barely more than 12 in the dark, and he turns away, the grief he's just begun to let out choking him, trapped in his throat. He cant do this, he can't, not if she's there. He is about to splinter apart and he needs her to _go_. He can't add his own pain to hers.

Thea watches him with fogged up eyes. She wont cry, her brother needs her. This is not the time for her tears. ( _Later, please let me do this now. Let me be strong for him just once. Please, please, please..._ ) He puts up a hand as she kneels on by his side on the bed, but she doesn't leave him. Not this time. Instead Thea takes his hand in both of hers, brings them close to her heart.

The sob that escapes him breaks her heart as surely as she knew it would, but its ok.

"It's ok Ollie." She repeats to him, because he is still looking away, leaning away from her. She grasps the back of his neck and she's afraid, but she can't _not_ be here. "It's ok. I can take it."

Because he believes the world will fall apart if he so much as hesitates, but it wont. It's wont.

 _I am strong enough. I can take it._

The way her tears clog her voice begs to differ, but Thea tells them to fuck off and holds her brother. She brings both their hands over his heart and wraps herself around his back the way she used to when she was a child, holding on to him tight, resting her cheek at the base of his neck. She can feel the accumulating tension in him, the little tremors… she can sense the fractures that the strain of it all is causing him, all the tiny cracks. Feels it when he falls a little forward, his head falling on his hands, hunched under some immense weight.

The first sob that he lets go shakes him whole and it wrecks Thea's bones; it burrows in her heart the way cold steel had, almost a year ago. She tightens the hold of her arms around his torso, the hold of her fingers around his hand. His heart is beating so fast it's like a hummingbird's wings beneath her hand.

He cries with the soul-shattering, earnest despair of a child, shaking helplessly with the relentless of it. Thea thought she was strong enough to bear this, but the truth is that her heart is in pieces… because so is his.

She doesn't move though. She holds him tighter, as unyielding as his misery. _It's ok to fall apart Ollie, it's ok._ She still holds on to his ribcage as if she is waiting for his heart to finally fly out, every piece of it. Its ok though; she knows where all the pieces are (or most of them). She can save them for him.

Thea has no idea how long it goes on. Eventually she pulls him backwards, lays him down… watches him curl around himself as the tears keep flowing. She wraps the comforter around him, loops one arm under his head and around his shoulders, kisses the top of his head the way their mother used to, gently soothing him to sleep. She doesn't even remember half the things she tells him, doubts he even listened. It doesn't even matter; her brother cried himself to sleep, that's what matters. After months of watching him fight against his grief, after living with the fear he was disappearing right in front of her, this can only be a good thing, she thinks.

Maybe that was why Thea watched the sun come up that day with a strange sense of _hope_ , of all things. Hope and something fierce burning beneath her ribs. She meant her promises: everything would be alright. One way or another, she would find a way to fix this. Felicity Smoak – or whatever pieces of her were left, would come back to them, even if Thea had to sell her soul to the devil to do it.

And just like that, finally, for the first time, she understood how Ollie could have done all that he had done for her, for their city. How he could have found the strength to look ancient evil in the eye and give himself over, even on the pain of death. Finally, Thea knew how her brother loved… because she felt it too. ( _all it took was to fall into the role of his protector, for one, instead of being protected by him_.) And just like that, the last missing piece of her slid in place and Thea Queen found herself full: of love, and fierce purpose. She found _herself_ , and held on tightly. And for the first time ever since the Pit brought her back from death, the darkness crawling at the edges of her soul didn't matter, because never had she known what she was fighting for more clearly.

She was Thea Queen, and she would never let her brother suffer this way ever again.


	3. 3

_3\. Summer sang in me a little while (that in me sings no more)_

 _Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,  
_ _Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,  
_ _Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:  
_ _I cannot say what loves have come and gone,  
_ _I only know that_ _ **summer sang in me  
**_ ** _A little while, that in me sings no more_** _._

 _Edna Vincent Milay_

It lasts two months. Almost nine weeks of a constant, frantic game of cat and mouse. In the end, the fact that she ended up unconscious in his arms had been more due to luck and good timing, than anything else. ( _Maybe a bit_ too much _luck, as the suspicious glint in Diggle's eyes seemed to say, but Oliver couldn't really begin to care. Not yet_.)

The only thing he could think of was the look in her eyes as she realised she had nowhere to run to anymore: wild and frantic, reminding him of an animal backed into a corner. She had vibrated with pure defiance, but there had been fear in her eyes too, unfettered and breathtaking fear and it had hit Oliver harder than he had thought was possible… Felicity had _never_ , ever been afraid of him. Not once. Not even when he'd deliberately tried to intimidate her, at the very beginning, had she looked at him like that: as if honestly believed he would hurt her. The mere thought of it was grotesque to him, but it had been solid reality to her and _that_ , that more than anything else – more than the bullets, or the blank looks, or the sabotaging and the constant traps - had proved to Oliver that the woman they had recovered did not have the first clue of who she was to him. Of who she was, period.

It had not been easy looking into her frightened eyes and loosening that sedating arrow. He _couldn't_ … Oliver could _not_ aim at _Felicity_ and let the arrow fly like it was nothing. That split-second hesitation had cost him too much the first time he had almost had her: it had cost him the chance to bring her home. Oliver was sure that Damien Darhk had known all along that would happen, which was probably why Felicity had been running point on every HIVE operation in the west coast for the last nine weeks. There had been no subtlety to his game, but Darhk had known he wouldn't need it: he had dangled Felicity in front of them, knowing they wouldn't be able to resist taking the chance to get her out. And he had been right.

Of course, that didn't mean they had been stupid about it: knowing they were walking into traps, Oliver had planned accordingly. And yet, multiple times, Felicity and her own team ( _her HIVE team of assassins… absurd, but true_ ) had gone alarmingly close to killing or capturing one or more of them.

With every time they'd failed, every time _Oliver_ failed, his hatred for Damien Darhk had grown, almost choking him. He had had no doubt that Darhk knew _exactly_ what he was doing; knew that the layers of damage he had been inflicting were infinite, bruising them all from the inside out, without needing to lay a single finger on them ( _maybe the prolonged torture of it all even amused him_ ). Darhk had used Felicity to destroy them, slowly, in every way he'd known they feared… and it had come so, _so_ close to working. It had been twisted and efficient to the last, and it could split one's blood, the cruelty of it all, because every time - _every single time -_ Oliver had had to make the choice between saving Digg's life, or Roy's, or his own, and abandoning the mission ( _abandoning Felicity!_ ), he'd felt as if he was betraying her to the deepest. And he knew he would never be able to forgive himself for it.

They failed over and over… Until they didn't.

And when she was finally in his arms, _finally_ , real and close, warm and whole and _alive_ … it had all been too much. The reality of her, of that moment, had almost dragged him to his knees. _8 months 14 days and that morning*_ , and now he could hold her again. She was real, in his arms, again... and there was no time to stop and think, no moment to absorb the enormity of what had just happened. They had to get the fuck out of there, yesterday! Oliver had not let go of her for a moment though; not for a single second. He held her as they retreated out of the old ship she had set up base in ( _later, only_ much _later would Oliver be able to appreciate the simple genius of that hideout_ ); held her as they boarded the helicopter and throughout the flight, one arm tightly wrapped around her shoulders, the other under her knees, keeping her close, fitting her against his chest. He'd let his head drop in that space between her shoulder and her neck, completely oblivious to the others around him, and just _breathed_. ( _and for the first time in months, it had not felt like drowning_ ) She'd smelled of smoke, burned plastic, sweat and blood. She'd smelled of herself underneath all that and as his silent tears fell on her skin, the reality of it - of Felicity and her wonderfully _beating_ heart - sunk into his bones and vibrated with new life all the way down to his toes.

He'd stayed like that for the entire flight, curved around her, _needing_ her every breath to puff against the crook of his neck, tickling his skin and reassuring him of reality. Her breaths grounded him as much as the solidity of her body pressed against his did; her pulse beneath his lips, where he kept them pressed against her throat, brought down the frantic pace of his. After the horror of losing her, and the nightmarish months after that, having her back in his arms was, in that moment, the essence of happiness. ( _the feeling had fundamentally changed now, tying itself to the little things: her heartbeat, her warm skin, her blood in her veins where it belonged…_ ) He had forgotten how to handle the feeling: it ached inside him, making his head spin, too much for one person to contain. He held her a little tighter because if it, fear, that old companion, already tainting it red.

Once they got back to their base, Oliver set her down gently on the table, so that Caitlin could examine her. Digg hadn't said a word either, but his silent, solid presence right at the other side of the table ( _touching Felicity's hair every now and then, an absentminded gesture that was as needy as Oliver's prolonged embrace had been_ ) was a reassurance that Oliver hadn't known he'd needed, until they made eye contact over Felicity's body and found mirroring relief in each other's eyes.

In the end it is Thea who pulls Oliver out of his trance-like state. She takes his hand and holds it tight, giving him a tremulous smile.

"She's ok Ollie." She nods a little, jerkily, as if the words themselves aren't enough. "It's going to be ok now."

Oliver manages a nod, because he knows she needs him to react, otherwise she'd worry, or get scared.

"How is Roy?" his voice is so rough, he has to clear his throat and try again. "Barry?"

Roy had taken a bullet somewhere on his side and they had seen blood seep through despite the body-armor he'd been wearing. Barry had almost been electrocuted.

"Digg is patching Roy up. They had armor-piercing bullets, the bastards, but it's ok. They didn't penetrate, just gave him one hell of a gash and a cracked rib. And Barry…"

"Fine." Barry grunts as he sits down. "Gonna be fine."

Oliver nods, does a quick check of his teammates. His eyes catch Nyssa's, who is sitting still as Sara stitches up the slash on her back, face completely impassive even though Oliver can see the bruises on her side blooming already. She inclines her head to him, and after a blink of complete surprise, Oliver does the same.

 _'_ _It's a strange kind of torture'_ , she had told him a few days ago, ' _to be in the presence of your beloved and feel yourself unremembered. It's one thing to watch love die, quite another to have it erased like it never was.'_

Oliver had known what she was trying to say. What she was warning him about. Thea though, had been the only one who had outright said it, because while everyone else was worried about the _how_ -s of Felicity's still living state, his sister had thought to warn him about the shadows. About the places Felicity might have fractured and the darkness that might have seeped in through the cracks.

"My father did it to me, remember." Thea had pointed out with a bitter smile. "We both know hers is no better."

Oliver looks down, takes in Felicity again from the tips of her dusty boots, the black clothes she is wearing, to the tips of her hair, tinted a deep, unfamiliar brown that make her somehow seem even younger than she is. The ponytail hasn't changed but the curls are messier. Gone is her bold lipstick, her bright colours. Her face is bare of any kind of make-up and she looks pale and small and frail. All things she is not. With his thumb and an aching heart, Oliver traces the spidery web of silver scars that starts at her temple, phantom pain pulling at his insides. He can see it so clearly, even now - the bullet going through her. The scars extent further into her skull, getting more pronounced as they go. There's a whole section of her hair, on the lower-left side of her head, that is only a few inches long and it makes Oliver think of head surgeries. They shave your hair off on the area they operate, don't they? But the question remains vague in his head. He can't imagine it. Whatever she has been through is beyond him.

But that doesn't matter either, because all Oliver has to do is look at her, to remember the simplest of all truths: that there is no place where Felicity would go, where he wouldn't follow. He will follow her right into hell if he has to. He promised he would.

When she starts to wake up, Oliver moves away. He knows how threatening hovering presences can be, if you think you've just been kidnapped. As he slips in a shadowy corner, Digg steps forward - apart from the rest of them but still a good 8 feet away from her. Felicity's trust in John has been almost absolute right from the beginning and they are counting on that to be true again.

( _She'd told him once, that she'd instinctively been inclined to trust_ him _from the beginning too – trust him to be a good person, with a good heart. And maybe that still holds true now, maybe it doesn't, but that is not why Oliver hides from her. It's his own reaction he doesn't trust, not hers_.)

They wait for Felicity to open her eyes, and Oliver feels like smiling because he knows she is awake. She is pretending very convincingly and it might even have worked, if half the people in the room hadn't been trained to notice things like that ( _if Oliver hadn't been so acutely aware of her that he could read her body language with the same ease he read written words_ ) and she hadn't been hooked to a dozen monitors - including one that silently monitored her heart-rate, which immediately spiked when she regained consciousness.

"I know you're awake Felicity." John says with the softest voice he is capable of, the kind of voice that is usually reserved for baby Sara. It still makes Felicity tense visibly.

She lets out a sigh, sounding borderline annoyed, and then opens her eyes.

"Don't sit up too quickly." Caitlin cautions gently. "You might be a bit lightheaded."

Felicity wavers a little, but when Caitlin steps forward to help, she flinches away, almost falling off the table. It takes all of Oliver's self control not to go there and catch her.

"We're not going to hurt you." Digg states firmly, as Caitlin moves way with her hands raised up, showing palms. For her part, Felicity doesn't seem take Digg's words on faith, but she sits up anyway, biting her lip to hide her grimace when she looks at the IV on her arm.

The stab of familiarity is immediate, the affection so immediate its almost harsh. Leave it to Felicity to be cooped up in a room full of strangers, and still the needle in her arm gets the biggest reaction out of her.

Once she is sitting, Felicity turns to face the room. She swings her legs to the side, but doesn't get down from the med-table and Oliver doesn't know why really, but the way her legs dangle without touching the floor makes the bridge of his nose burn and his throat feel tight. She looks so small and vulnerable that it's almost more than he can bear to stand still and out of sight. But her eyes, they reflect the truth: there is clarity in them, and a hard edge, as she takes in her surroundings. As she watches them, Oliver watches _her,_ his chest clenching painfully. Where before there had only been suspicion, now there is certainty: she's been trained in the months she has been with HIVE. He can see it, recognizes it in the methodical way she take everyone in, assessing potential threats quietly, mapping out her area and the exits. But then her eyes settle on the computers and linger just for a second more than they did on anyone, and that almost makes Oliver smile, because it's such a Felicity thing to do - 80% of the time, tech is the first thing she notices in a room.

(' _Unless_ you're _in the room. Preferably shirtless. If you're shirtless and doing the salmon ladder, you have 96% of my braintime.'_

 _'_ _96% huh? Where does the other 4% go?'_

 _'_ _Duh, daydreams, obviously. And most recently, getting you naked.'_

 _'_ _You don't really need a plan for that. Just say the word and I'm there.'_

 _'_ _Hah! The word.'_

 _'_ _What?'_

 _'_ _I just said it: 'the word'. Strip now please.'_

 _'_ _We're in the middle of…'_

 _'_ _Door are locked. You're really making me rethink the whole… Oh,_ much _better!')_

"Hello." Digg says softly, the smallest, softest smile on his face. Oliver blinks out of the memory he just slid into and back into the room, staring at a blank faced Felicity.

They hadn't expected a response, not really, so when Felicity fixes an unwavering look on Digg and says ' _hello_ ' back, Oliver is stunned. …She seems awfully calm for someone who had just been captured – and Oliver is not the only one who notices this.

Hope flares fierce and bright in his chest.

"Do you know where you are?" Digg asks, tone unchanged, even though Oliver can tell from just the look in his friend's eyes, that John has just had the same thought Oliver did.

Felicity shakes her head 'no' and it hast to be the truth because she looks at the people she'd once called family without a single shred of recognition.

"We are in Seattle, at a secure location. You're safe here." Digg continues.

It makes the side of Felicity's lip twitch.

"Safe huh?" her voice is rough, her throat feels scratchy probably. Oliver eyes the glasses of water by her bed, the ones she hasn't touched. "That's a pretty strong word to throw around, considering."

She lets that hang unpleasantly in the air. There's irony in her eyes; they are sharper than they have ever been. Bleaker too.

Oliver wants to stop from going there, but he can't; the thought is practically _seared_ into his brain-matter, because Felicity is one of the strongest, brightest people Oliver had ever met. Strong in ways Oliver hadn't always known how to be: through absolute belief in what they did, in what she wanted out of herself and people around her. She has faced killers, man-made disasters and fucking Slade Wilson, and she's always been afraid, but she's never given up. She's seen a whole city turned into a war-zone and walked it with him and Digg. _Felicity_ had been the one to stare the Demon's Head in the eye and threaten war, where lesser men had begged.

…so what could they have done to her, to dim her eyes that much?

Oliver takes a deep breath and then another. The surge of violence he feels is aimless, and without a target or an outlet, it eats away at his insides, scrapping in the inside of his ribcage like a hungry beast clawing to get out.

If he _ever_ comes face to face with Damien Darhk again…

"I know that you don't remember." Digg says calmly. "But we're your friends Felicity."

Her eyes take in John's face, measuring him, the truth he tells. She doesn't expect to the sincerity she finds. It makes her expression flicker between suspicion and uncertainty.

"Friends, is it? Gotta say, if this is how you treat your friends, I'd hate to see where you stick your enemies."

Digg huffs a laugh, but it sounds choked. "Yeah, we have a whole special place for those. You helped design it."

One eyebrow raises up in suspicion but she doesn't say anything.

"We've been chasing you a while Felicity." And John's words are heavy with the grief and frustration of it all, even as his expression never strays from the warmth that he had always reserve only for Felicity.

She tilts her chin up a bit at that. "Yes, I know. Never managed to get close enough to grab me though. Till now, obviously."

Digg smiles, his eyes are way too shiny to be completely dry and she notices. It softens her expression a bit – adds curiosity to the mix of the feelings swimming in her eyes.

"Yeah, we had to work on it a bit. The last time we got close enough, you shot at us. It was a shock." And that is the mother of all understatements.

The way she tilts her head a bit sideways is so familiar that it slices straight through Oliver and John both.

"Us?"

"Yes. Us."

It she frowns just a tiny bit. "I don't remember shooting at you."

Because she hadn't.

"How about the man in the green hood. You remember him?"

Felicity's eyes shutter down, her expression wiped clean.

"The archer." she says flatly. "Yes, I remember him."

There is something in her tone, something that steals Oliver's breath like nothing else before. Because it's one thing to have her riddle him with bullets, but it's quite another to hear Felicity - the same Felicity that never wavered in her faith in him - talk about him with such… such contempt.

Oliver has had hallucinations that have felt more real than this…

"Well, you shot at him."

"I did." she says stiffly. "He had an arrow aiming for my chest. What was I supposed to do, let him kill me again?"

In the dead-silence of the room, Oliver's harsh inhale sounds so loud. He can't really tell though; he can't hear anything over the rush of blood to is ears.

"Ollie would _never_ hurt you." Thea snaps, eyes are alight with indignation. But Oliver can see the fear his sister is trying to hide. She's not talking back because she is angry; she is doing it because she doesn't want him hurt.

" _'_ _Would never'_ … that's a peculiar choice of words." Felicity repeats deliberately enunciating every word, eyes unflinchingly staring back into Thea's.

"It's the truth." Thea insists, first clenched tightly at her side. She seems like she's going to step forward until Roy grabs her hand, lacing his fingers through hers to anchor her. Oliver takes a deep breath himself, tries to find his centre, and steps forward. He had not wanted to do this like this. He'd wanted her to feel some kind of safety before he showed his face, but now it doesn't matter. He can't just sit this out.

Oliver doesn't miss the way Felicity's eyes snap to him immediately once he moves, the way she goes stock still at the sight of him, how her eyes widen and even her heart-rate picks up in the background.

God, she is _scared_...

Oliver takes the first step towards her before he even knows what he's doing.

"That's close enough." Her voice shatters the tension, the silence, like the harsh crack of a whip. It makes Oliver stop in his tracks immediately, eyes wide and almost pleading with her. Something ugly and vicious surges in his chest, all his demons in upheaval, when he registers the alarm she is looking at him with.

He licks his lips, looks down, gulps. Looks back up into her eyes, catches the puzzlement there, the suspicion. The dread…

Oliver takes a couple of steps backwards this time, sitting himself down between Digg and Laurel. Everyone is resolutely _not_ looking at him and he feels the tension of the room like a weight on his shoulders. He clears his throat before he talks, knowing that his voice is still going to sound rough, but having to say it anyway.

"I mean you no harm, Felicity. And I have never…" His voice breaks just a little so Oliver has to close his mouth, try again. "I have _never_ hurt you." _Liar!_ "Not that way. Never."

He looks straight into her eyes when he says that. It's such a silly thing to say, really, like stating that the sky is blue and expecting a surprise. But apparently he is living in a world where the sky is always tainted red and the sun rises from the west and Felicity is afraid of him ( _all facts of the same impossibility_ ) because she thinks he's tried to kill her.

Her eyes have always been transparent to him, but not now. Now her stormy-blue eyes are fixed on him and shuttered, her face seemingly carved in marble… but her heart-rate hasn't calmed yet.

"Funny how this one story keeps being told different ways." She finally says, unblinking eyes on him. "It's really starting to make me wonder."

She delivers the words flatly, but Oliver catches the simmering anger in beneath them. She doesn't believe him… but whatever they told her before - now it looks like she doesn't believes _that_ either ( _or at least, like she's starting to doubt it_ ). And that can only be a good thing.

"None of us is ever going to hurt you Felicity. I swear it." Oliver repeats, very much aware of how he sounds, how transparent his feelings for her are in his voice. Of the fact that, were she a bit more inclined towards them, a bit less on edge, she would be able to tell too.

As it stands, she just scoffs softly.

"Kiss my ass, you swear. You and every other guy." she mutters as she rolls her eyes. When she looks at him in the face again, she seems almost irritated. "Don't you fucking swear. I'm not a child and I don't need platitudes so let's just skip that and get to the ' _threats and forceful persuasion 101_ ' part of this lovely experience, shall we?"

Oliver is left so shocked that he can't say anything. He just gapes at her like a fish for a moment before shaking his head. A breathy sound that could almost pass for a chuckle if he weren't so fucking desperate, makes it past his lips. He hangs his head, scratches the back of it with both hands and tries to bottle back his feelings because they are not going to help any. She needs stability. A kind of reassurance she can recognise. She doesn't need a stranger looking at her like a kicked puppy.

…because that's what Felicity said his face looked like, whenever he pleaded with her silently.

"Ok, look. This is not us kidnapping you." he says steadily, more evenly than before. She raises one eyebrow at him from where she is sitting, and he is reminded of sitting across from her at the Big Belly Burger a lifetime ago, telling her about how he typically got his information out of people. She had looked at him then exactly the way she is looking at him now. It's enough to almost make hims smile. Almost. "Like John said, we just wanted you safe. There will be no threats and no… no kind of persuasion, ok."

She tilts her head at him, just a little to the side. Her eyes are sober and sharp, and Oliver knows he is being evaluated. of all the things she could have forgotten, her ability to tell his lies apart from his truths is starting to seem like the most inconvenient one. ( _What a lie. He misses every piece of her, none more than the others, all with the same anguish._ )

"And you promise me that I won't get hurt?" she asks, deliberate.

Oliver hesitates, and Felicity narrows her eyes at that. She is just about to open her mouth to retaliate when he holds up a hand to stay her.

"You… you just told me not to do that." he reminds her, feeling that the conversation is taking a turn for the ridiculous, but not caring in the slightest.

"No, no. That was swearing, swearing is odd. Promising is different.*" And she talks fast, getting the words out almost jumbled, the way she always does when nervousness is creeping up on her. But her eyes are very steady on his. "I take promises very seriously."

Oliver has never thought he'd see the day when Felicity levelled a real, certifiable threat on him… and now she has. Because those words – yeah, definitely threat material. They sit now on different sides of the room, looking at each other in complete recognition, as two people that understand each other's intentions no matter what. Oliver nods slowly.

"I promise." he says the words slowly, with the same intensity and weight with which he has made every vow. His eyes are as steady on hers as Felicity's are on his. She measures the worth of his words for long moments… and it feels so familiar, it really does, the way everything and everyone else just fades away, leaving them alone in this conversation only they can hear.

Felicity is the one to break it. She blinks, the whole room hears her take a deep breath… and then she does something utterly unexpected. She sighs, pulls her legs up so that she can sit cross-legged on the metal table of the med-bay and looks at her audience in open expectation. There is something lighter about her face now, about her whole countenance; something that feels closer to the Felicity they all know. It leaves Oliver reeling, trying to blink back his surprise at the change of her demeanour. The way she shifts moods jars him, because he is starting to realise the full extent of how unprepared he is to anticipate her.

The contrast is never more stark once she opens her mouth again.

"So, you wanted me and you got me." she shrugs, pursing her lips as she looks at the faces that line the room. "Now what?"

Oliver can practically feel the surprise reverberate around the room. He looks for Digg - sees it mirrored in his eyes too.

"Well, honestly… we have no idea." Digg admits, sitting back on the chair. A startled chuckle make it out of him, and he rubs his hands together. "I kinda expected you to be more difficult about this. I mean…" and then his levity is gone, his eyes are focused on her. "Do you remember anything at all about us?"

Felicity opens her mouth and it seems for a moment she's going to give them the equivalent of an eye-roll as an explanation, but something stops her. Her eyes flicker to him and then Digg, and then on everyone else and Oliver knows what she is seeing: that the whole room is holding its breath for her answer. That this is not a joke, nor is it a threat. That there is nothing but genuine concern here and the question is so, _so_ important to the people in front of her, who seem to be genuinely worried… It throws her visibly, makes her blink and doubt. Makes her close her mouth and bite her lips, look down, denying them her eyes.

"I know who you people are, in general lines. I've read your files…" She looks at Oliver then, and his heart thuds in his chest heavily, painfully.

"I know I used to work for _you_ , almost two years ago. No idea what you had over my head, by the way, to make be your _secretary_ , of all things…" she says with narrowed eyes that are the exact replica of the outrage she had shown him that day at the office, two years ago. But then she stops, her eyes widen, her mouth opens a little. "Oh wow, I didn't have anything to do with you losing your company did I?" and she grimaces a little, and it's so familiar that it makes him smile. "Cause that… kinda sounds like something I would do… to get back at you for the whole secretary thing…"

Oliver laughs.

He honest to god _laughs_ and Digg joins in with a quiet chuckle. ( _He doesn't notice Thea's eyes on him, how her smile is so very tremulous as she looks at him, like he's been away for months on end and she missed him so, so much_.)

Oliver shakes his head, rubbing a hand down his face.

"No. No, you had nothing to do with that." he says calmly.

That also surprises her.

"Huh." but then she shrugs it off. "Ok well, as I was saying, I know things about you all, but I don't remember _knowing_ you, not the way you seem to mean it." she adds then, softly, in the voice she always used with him when she sensed that the barest brush would crack him open.

Oliver is not one to miss details, especially not where they concern Felicity. So the fact that her eyes tend to linger on him more than on anyone else in the room does not fly by him.

"You don't look afraid though." Sara pipes in, stepping closer.

Felicity tracks her with interest… and a definite humour that tugs her lips upwards a little.

"Sara Lance. You're the Canary." it's not a question and nobody there is really surprised that Felicity knows this - because Damien Darhk used to. It's a stark reminder of who they are dealing with, yet again.

"I go by White Canary these days." Sara says gently, a small smile on her lips, but without showing much else. She is much better than Oliver ever will be at keeping distance from this.

"Right, because your sister is the Black Canary and you guys like the idea of mirrors and all that. Still a fan of how you both beat misogyny's ass with a stick though." Felicity says, reinforcing her words with a small nod as she looks between Sara and Laurel, who are both smiling widely now. Their combined grins make Felicity smile too, for the first time since she opened her eyes.

The sight of it makes Oliver's eyes burn.

"Isn't that against HIVE rules or something?" Roy asks, catching Felicity's attention. Her smile turns mischievous.

"What, like ' _no cheering for anyone other rather the home team_ '?" she teases. She is actually… teasing. As if nothing is amiss. As if it hasn't been months and months since she was last here, joking and smiling and _breathing_ … She smiles and teases and it's wonderful.

It's fucking devastating.

Felicity shrugs off the bewildered looks she is getting.

"What can I say? Colour me rebellious." she adds flippantly. "And to answer your question, I don't look afraid because I'm not. This whole thing isn't exactly a surprise for me. I mean, obviously I didn't know what kind of treatment I was gonna get, being the Devil's own spawn and all that, but after the third time it kinda became obvious that you didn't want to kill me, so… here I am."

Her casual mention of her relationship with Darhk, her flippancy about her own circumstance, everything she is saying between the lines - it all gets everybody's attention so fast, you could feel every person in the room getting whiplash.

" _Here you are_?" Roy repeats, frowning and suddenly looking very unsure as he glances form Oliver to Digg and back again. "Ok, maybe this is just me, but… why do I get the feeling that we're the ones out of the loop here, even though _we_ did the snatching?"

 _Because it's probably true_ , Oliver finds himself thinking sluggishly. He'd say he can't believe it, but this is Felicity. When it comes to her, nothing is beyond him. Nothing is beyond _her_! He watches her bite her lip a little, and recognises the flicker of guilt ( _and amusement_ ) in her eyes.

"Well… not to put down your efforts of anything, cause they were great. Really, super-kudos to you guys. And though I don't recommend walking into a room full of armed guards next time - yeah I'm looking at you there, Fierce Pixie. I had to double hack my own system through the North freaking Pole to open those doors for you that time…"

Thea's eyes widen. Oliver feels his spine tense, the vibration echoing all the way up to his toes.

"That… that was you?" Thea asks, bewildered.

Felicity gives her an almost-sympathetic look. "What, did you think that the big locks on those doors were just for show?"

Thea shakes her head a little, but doesn't say anything so Felicity just blunders on in her reasoning, the way she always does.

"So, yeah, aside from the occasional on-the-fly stupid decision, you guys were great and this is _not_ me putting all your efforts down, but… the only reason I'm here right now, is cause I wanted to be."

Digg huffs a chuckle, one that turns into a full blown laugh. Oliver is still not over his shock, but he is getting there. Slowly.

"Are you trying to tell me that you _let_ yourself get caught?" and John shakes his head at her, eyes warm and friendly, but he still doesn't believe her. He thinks she is trying to manipulate her way into some more agency with the people that kidnapped her. It would be what either of them would do. Except… Felicity probably doesn't have to.

"You know, I would be more inclined to believe that if hadn't almost gotten killed a couple of times, caught a lot of other times. Or if I didn't have multiple bullet holes in my body armour right now, and had narrowly missed a stab wound or two." John points out.

"Wow, ok! _That_ is _so_ not my fault." Felicity says quickly. "You were trying to infiltrate HIVE - what did you expect, candy floss bullets?! It's not like I could hold a poll and see who else wanted in on the ' _break Felicity out of the loony-bin_ ' plan!"

And that's what finally jerks Oliver into speaking, because this is starting to sound dangerously close to insane and he needs to know, right now…

"A plan. You had a plan? And you used a random pack of people who for all you knew could be criminals, to get you out of HIVE?"

Felicity hesitates at his incredulous tone, the anger it conceals. Her face sobers up immediately.

"Hmm… Yes."

Oliver takes in a harsh breath ( _his heart is beating so fast he thinks it will pound right out of his chest, because what she is saying flirts so close with words like 'reckless' and 'lethal' that it almost makes him want to howl_ ) - but Digg's hand on his arm stops him. Reminds him to keep his head, not to slip. She wouldn't understand his reaction, she'd just be scared or turn hostile on them.

"Palmer decrypted your location." Digg says evenly, watching her carefully.

Oliver huffs. That was stretching the truth to a breaking point. It had taken Palmer two weeks to track down the signal they had caught - accidentally, might he add - and the whole time he had said it was like chasing ghosts. As if to prove his thoughts right, Felicity's face takes on a gleeful hue. She folds her lips inwards to contain it because she probably reminds herself that mocking her potential kidnappers isn't such a hot idea.

"Ray Palmer." She rolls the name around her mouth as if it amuses her, turns her head, finds him. The idiot actually waves. It widens her smile a bit, makes it more genuine. "Right. Yeah, you're cute." she adds, amused, and Oliver can't believe it, can't _believe_ his own reaction but its true: how is it possible that, in a moment like this, he would still find it in him to be jealous of fucking Ray Palmer ( _who glances at him and flinches from the look Oliver must be sporting… and yeah, there's a bit some satisfaction to be had there. Just a bit_ ).

But then, the humor in Felicity's eyes turns sharper, her eyes narrower.

"But not _that_ cute. You used a 35Kx-software decoder to trace my signal back to the ship. Out of 1456 access nodes, you really think it was coincidence that only five of them weren't password and firewall protected?"

Palmer coughs, probably choking on his own spit, and nods, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah, nope. I just hoped for the best and stopped questioning it after day 10."

Her eyebrows rise a bit - her ' _really_?!' expression, but she is smiling. Palmer smiles back.

"Ok. Let's assume for just a second that we believe you." Digg concedes. He eyes her carefully, with suspicion now. "That would bring us right back to ' _Why_ ', don't you think?"

And that's when Felicity sobers up, the smile slipping away from her face as if it had never been there. And it's almost unnatural because Felicity, even when she was serious, she never looked quite so bereft in it.

"You've been after me for 2 months. You've almost been killed or worse, _caught_ , multiple times and you didn't give up." She deliberately enunciates every word, her voice stern. Oliver recognizes that tone - it's the one she got whenever she fought with him ( _or anyone, really_ ), the one that preceded her Loud Voice, if she wasn't listened to. But there's something changed about that as well, a layer of authority laced in it that Oliver had rarely heard of before. ( _It was as if she expected to be obeyed… and he remembers his time in Nanda Parbat, when he was Heir to the Demon, and his every word was an order. The parallel makes him shiver_.)

"Darhk kept getting me into your way because he _wanted_ me there and didn't feel like telling the truth about why, even though the guy he said had _killed_ me was the one after me. Can you say 'bait' any louder?" She fixes her eyes on Oliver, who flinches at that accusation. She doesn't miss it. "At this point, ' _Why_ ' is the question _I_ should be asking, don't you think?" Felicity leans back on her arms, studying Dig intently. "So, if you want to prove to me that you're _friends_ , as you keep saying, start with the truth when you answer that."

"We don't want anything and that _is_ the truth. We just wanted you home." Sara says before any of them can answer.

Felicity goes utterly still at that; her eyes harden with anger. She's probably heard that one before hasn't she?

This is a mistake, Oliver thinks as he sees her anger settling. Appealing to the past will only make her distrust them.

"Home. I don't know any of you."

"You used to." Digg insist.

"I don't remember that, so it's irrelevant." She bites back, frigid now.

Digg purses his lips. "So you don't believe me, and it looks like you have no intention of changing your mind - yet you keep telling me you let yourself get caught. The ' _why_ ' just changed court Felicity."

The silence stretches between them so long that Oliver almost gives up entirely on the conversation.

"You know how they say, that the devil you know is better than the one you don't?"

Digg nods, and Oliver's heart starts beating directly in his throat, because there is bitterness in the smile on Felicity's face, and it's the saddest expression he has seen there, ever. It makes him cringe, the way her pain seems to radiate off of it.

"Yeah, well, I don't exactly subscribe to that theory." She adds flatly. "I wanted out, but I couldn't do it alone. You were my ticket, the only one available, so… I took a leap of faith. Or desperation. Whatever fits. That's about all there is to it." And then, flooring them all, she asks the question that would change their fight to the core. "So… What are you guys planning to do against HIVE? And no offence to whatever the plan you've been operating, but you need a better one, cause we are collectively running out of time."

"And you're here to help?" Laurel cuts in for the first time, arms crossed over her chest. She hadn't objected to bringing Felicity in, on the contrary, but as usual, she had been the one to voice the ugly shit that was in everyone's head, but nobody dared say out loud: that they were taking a big chance with her. "Felicity, we all loved you and we all respected you, but you've been away for almost 8 months, and during 2 of those you've been an active HIVE agent. Why should we trust you, when you keep repeating how you have no ties to us at all. For all we know you could stab us in the back at any time."

"That's… a really good point." Felicity says after a while. "Truth is, I don't have an answer to that. You'll have to take a chance, same as I did with you all… Still, this whole line of questioning kinda makes me wonder what you plan to do with me, if you have no intention of using me for what I do best."

Oliver straightens just a bit. He knows Felicity had never accepted sitting in the sidelines quietly. Quite a number of their fights had been about him having difficulties dealing with the fact that sometimes she had to take heavy risks too and that he couldn't just coop her up under blankets until the monsters went away - because she'd set fire to the god dammed blankets! But this doesn't feel like it's that kind of sentiment. …This feels like she can't see a purpose for herself, beyond being useful. Beyond being _used_.

"What?" he asks that, because 'what' is his version of her ' _explain that_ _sentence_ ' and between them, they always understood when the other needed more to go on. She understands now too… ( _only a moment after the word had come out of his mouth did Oliver remember that she might not_ )

"If you're thinking about using me to negotiate with Darhk, then let me save you the effort, and probably your lives: that is _not_ gonna go over well for you."

From his left, Oliver hears a soft snort.

"Oh he _will_ want you back, that's our biggest… problem…"

But Roy trails off when he notices the way Felicity is looking at him. Her eyes have gone stone cold, as sharp as the edge of a blade.

"I-I mean, that it's a problem, because he'll look for you and we gotta be prepared for that. You're not the bargaining chip here, it's not like that." But the look on her face doesn't seem to be softening and Roy is starting to panic a little. "Not that we would use you like that… that's not…"

"You don't know how to quit while you're ahead, do you Harper?" Laurel asks, looking at Roy as if he's lost his mind.

"Hand me back to him, and you'll find out real quick that Damien Darhk is the least of your concerns." Felicity says slowly, with a dispassionate intent that tells Oliver she is very much prepared to follow through with that threat. It's not that big of a surprise really: Felicity rarely threatened anyone, but when she did it was never lightly, and it was never empty.

" _Guys_!" Roy's plea is met with side-looks that make him fidget. "But… I-I… She…"

"Don't mind him. He's proof that you can't beat the stupid out of someone." Digg says calmly, disengaging his pointed glare at Roy to give Felicity a reassuring look.

"Not for lack of trying either." Sara adds, her voice low and vibrating with the promise of one hell of a workout later. It makes Roy groan.

"Felicity…" Her name is out of his mouth before he can even stop it, and the buzz that had taken over the room now quiets down. She is looking at him as if he shouted, even though Oliver had said her name in what was only a breath louder than a whisper. Something flickers in her eyes, something a lot like trepidation, but not quite. Oliver takes a deep breath before speaking.

"We have hours of surveillance. You used to make videos too." he says, surprising her. This is not what she'd expected him to say. "Of us here or at home. You took a lot of pictures. I'll show them to you. You don't have to believe us, but at least give us a chance to prove to you…"

Her little frown asks him ' _to prove what?_ '

"That you're family. And we love you." And this time he sounds as sure as the foundations of the earth. "You were taken from us and we were not going to leave you behind. Not for anything."

"Took you a while to get around it." she says softly. She speaks too softly for it to be an accusation, but its sounds that way in olives ears. "You looked in all the wrong places, like you had no idea what you were doing."

Oliver looks down, wrings his hands together.

"We thought you were dead." Oliver says without looking her in the eye. He can't. The words taste bitter, they turn his insides to iron. "There was a mission. We were supposed to infiltrate HIVE, get the prisoners out and destroy their tracking and surveillance programs…" Oliver shakes his head. It doesn't matter. "It went badly. You got caught. …You got shot."

She gulps and her eyes turn inward, as if she's trying to pinpoint that particular moment. She touches the fine netting of the scars at her temple. They are impossibly small and marginal-looking, considering the blood he'd seen, the way she'd fallen… the bullet that had pierced through her. He wishes he could hold her now; every molecule in his body aches for it. He wishes he could cup her face and kiss her breathless, for hours, until that faraway look in her eyes is gone, tell her it would be ok; that she was not alone, never would be, and that he would go with her anywhere, _anywhere_! That he would be anything she needed him to be, just so he didn't have to see an ounce of pain in her eyes ever again. He wishes he could tell her that there is nothing he won't be prepared to do, just to see her smile again.

But he just sits there, helpless, watching her blank face as she processes her thoughts in silence. A foreign feeling, that - Felicity always babbled her thoughts out loud and it was one of the most endearing things about her, that openness. That trust.

It's gone now.

"Who shot me?" she asks, quiet and intent. The answer is in her eyes when she raises them to his; she just wants confirmation. She gets it when Oliver looks back, without even needing to speak.

Then she looks away, pursing her lips in anger. In pain and open resentment.

"And the hits just keep on coming." she mutters darkly, lips thin in the kind of anger that Oliver had rarely seen on her face before. She closes her eyes, shakes her head. Her smile is a grimace, a disarmed kind of acceptance on her face, as if there was something obvious and deeply disappointing about the whole thing, and she had been stupid for missing it.

She works at taking deep breaths for a while.

"You guys got any idea how come I'm still alive and kicking?" she finally asks, looking at him, then at Digg, and finally at Palmer who was still sitting in front of the monitors.

"Not exactly." Digg says after exchanging a look with Oliver. "Do you?"

Felicity shakes her head faintly, not at all there, her eyes glassy and unfocused. "When i woke up, i was…" for the first time her voice is thick with emotion, but she trails off and Oliver knows even those words were not meant to be said; that they simply slipped out. She blinks furiously, and Oliver knows she is trying to distance herself from the memory that just assaulted her. "I don't know." she adds with finality.

She does know. But she won't say.

"We are running tests." Caitlin says softly. "The second we know anything, we will tell you."

"I have nanites in me." Felicity says quickly, as if she just remembered. "I was injected with them at some point. Is it possible that that's how I survived?" and this time she is looking straight at Palmer, who straightens a little in his chair.

"I noticed that. I can't know for sure without having the details of your wound and the programming of the nanites you were injected with. The only thing I know so far is that yours are a bit… different from mine." Ray clears his throat, looking momentarily at the screens on the other side of the table. "So I'm running a diagnostics scan right now, to find out if there are only weak points on their operating software, from which to…"

He falters when Felicity unfolds her legs and steps down from the table. She walks to the chair where he is sitting and flaps her hand, in the universal sign for ' _move_ '. And he does - he gets up from that chair as if the thing just lit his ass on fire, and Felicity plants herself on her seat the way she always has: as if she belongs there.

Oliver just can't stop staring.

"I did the upgrade of the quantum processors that sustains those nanites." She shakes her ponytail loose, combs her fingers through it before she pulls it up again.

"Are you… are you _hacking yourself_?" Palmer asks, and then turns to the room, eyes wide and mouth just a tiny bit open. Digg shrugs helplessly while Sara is biting her lip to contain her smile.

Thea has her arms crossed and is giving the back of Felicity's head a look that could be both bewilderment and admiration, while Roy just smiles and rolls his eyes.

"Yeah. I guess I kinda am. Weirder things have happened." and then the sound of her tapping fingers on the keyboard pauses and she turns her head around, to catch Oliver's eye.

"Weirder things _have_ happened… right?"

He manages to give her a smile. A helpless one, which mirrors his feelings exactly. "You hacking into anything is about as normal as it gets around here."

She smiles back - faint, the ghost of what her expression used to be, but it's there and it pulls at him in the best way, the connection between them vibrating with life. Felicity feels it too, she pauses just one moment too long as she looks at him. Oliver doesn't know what it is she seen in his face, but it gives her pause, it disquiets her. But she doesn't say anything. He watches her as she turns back to her computers and that's the end of the discussion. Oliver can accept that, because now, no matter how bleak or complicated or difficult, they have a tomorrow.


	4. 4

4\. _The sun has perished too (with it every dream of mine)_ _(but one)_

 _When you were as an angel in my arms,_  
 _Had laid your bare head just below my chin,_  
 _Your length pressed up to mine, entrusting charms_  
 _My whole youth's starward longing could not win;_  
 _With still the murmur of your love in me,_  
 _Miracle-tones of all my lifelong hope,_  
 _I wished that there might start eternity_  
 _And seal forever that sweet envelope;  
And as it did, my thoughts are now for you_  
 _As every star is blotted by the sun,_  
 _And so the sun itself_  
 _Has perished too,_  
 _And with it, every dream of mine_  
 _But one._

 ** _Time in Eternity_** _T. Merrill_

While Sara, Nyssa, Laurel and Barry take a few well-earned hours of rest, Oliver, Digg and Roy take the first shift ( _Thea in tow, because if they don't sleep, she won't either_ ), casually hanging around the lair trying to keep ( _or look_ ) busy as Felicity worked, mostly because not one of them could sleep knowing that Felicity was up ( _and out of their line of sight_ ). Oliver watches from a distance as Felicity divides her attention between three different workstations while Cisco and Palmer help any way they can. But when she hits the five hours mark ( _at three in the morning_ ), Oliver and Digg start to get worried.

In the end, it's Thea who manages to get Felicity away from the computers, using ( _one of_ ) the oldest trick in the book: she dangles the greasy Big Belly package in front of her face. Felicity's stormy blue eyes snap up immediately, lips parting in an ' _Oh_ ' that had Thea biting back a laugh.

"Hungry yet? Then you better come feed yourself because no matter what Roy says, Big Belly Burgers are not half as good once they go cold."

Felicity gives Thea the stink eye for that, but the younger Queen just winks cheekily.

When Thea returns to the sitting area without Felicity, Oliver frowns.

"Give it a couple of minutes, big brother."

"Thea…"

Thea interrupts him with one of her 'looks' ( _that remind him an awful lot of their mother, actually_ ) and that gets him to shut it. Which is a good thing, considering that, true to promise, Felicity shows up a couple of minutes later.

"So… I have bad news, worse news and somewhat-encouraging news." she says as she sits down two next to Thea ( _there had been a free seat next to Oliver too, and he didn't miss the way she'd skirted around him_ ). "Which one do you guys want first?"

"We have a rule around here: no talking shop at the table." Digg interrupts from his end of the table. He relents on mentioning that she had been the one to establish that rule.

"Yeah, so we don't choke on the buckets of sunshine you're obviously about to unload on us." Roy grumbles.

Felicity looks at them one by one, then shrugs and grabs the Belly Buster they have set apart for her.

Oliver tracks the movements of her fingers, the chirped black nail polish and a couple of new scars he can see on her forearm now that she has rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. There is a thin layer of dust all over her except for her hands and her face and he can't tear his eyes away from the scars on her temple… Thea jabs her insanely sharp elbow right in his ribs and Oliver barely manages to keep his grunt in. It has the desired effect though: he stops staring at Felicity and turns his hear to glare at his little sister. Her green eyes scream at him to ' _stop it with the freaking_ gazing _already, you'll creep her out!_ '

Oliver gives her one firm look, but then turns his eyes to his ( _unappealing_ ) food anyway and tries not to think.

He fails spectacularly.

Damien Darhk will come for her ( _for them all_ ), that is a certainty. He may or may not know where they are right now, considering the overboard measures they all took, but it's only a matter of time before everything unravels. This fight needs Felicity now more than, but not everyone trusts her to fight on their side. Laurel had said so multiple times; Nyssa's disapproval didn't even need to be voiced while Sara had kept a carefully neutral silence the whole time. ( _Thea is unshakably on his side, but Oliver can't make out her real thoughts beneath that_ ). It seems to irritate them that Oliver doesn't even bother to pretend he takes that kind of doubt seriously. But the truth here is that they don't know Felicity like he does; the way Digg and even Roy, do. All three of them had been able to recognize her frantic energy for what it was: panic setting in.

Oliver looks up discreetly, skims his eyes over her: the hunched shoulders, the straight line of her back; her planted feet, ready for flight. Her eyes: never still and sharp as cold naked blade. ( _The frantic pace of her work, the nervous tapping of her foot, the way she picked at her cuticles till they were a bloody mess - only then did she notice the sting and stop with a wince)_ The tiny knife he'd found tucked into a small holster at the small of her back. ( _he and Digg had agreed to let her keep it. Hadn't wanted to strip her of every measure of control over her person and safety she might need. Felicity was never more dangerous than when she thought she was backed into a corner, and they hadn't wanted to drive her there_ ) The truth is as obvious as it's logical: Felicity doesn't trust them a single inch. But she fears Darhk more ( _there had been the spark of something darker than fear in her eyes too_ …)

Oliver feels his stomach hollow out. He has no idea what to do, how to reach out to her, but at the same time, he cant stand to be a bystander to her anguish. His own helplessness eats at him so much that he can't even seem to swallow down his food without choking on it.

Felicity though, she doesn't seem to have that problem. Oliver realizes that the moment a low hum of appreciation reaches his ears. Oliver's eyes snap up to her face, eyes closed chewing on her burger with the single-minded dedication that Felicity has always reserved for good food… and the sight of it makes him remember how to smile.

"God, this is _so good_!" she says around a mouthful. ( _Oliver's smile grows just a tiny bit wider_ )

Felicity hears a chuckle, warm and low and looks up to meet the friendly eyes of John Diggle. She pauses, and then allows herself to give a small, tentative smile back. As she looks down again Felicity wonders about the paradox of a man who, on paper, had read as a perfectly dangerous individual, capable of snapping her neck in one motion; yet now that she is face to face with him, he seems utterly nonthreatening. Was it the smile, the gentle voice? No, it was the eyes – Felicity concludes. It's definitely the eyes. ( _She has known enough killers by now, to know when the person looking back at her was one. John Diggle definitely did not seem of that kind_ [1].) It's still ridiculous though, to find herself not fearing him as much as she'd expected: his bicep was bigger than her freaking head!

"Once this is over, I'm gonna go on a pizza-and-burgers spree." Felicity says as she grabs one of the fries and bites into it with gusto.

This statement is given causally enough, but it gives Oliver some pause.

"What, does HIVE have some rule against junk food or something?" Roy's tone falls somewhere between joking and disbelieving.

The smile on her face is deprecating.

"Who knew, right? Underground organization bent on control and world-domination, with a totally relaxed attitude on mass-murder and human trialing, but hey, at least they're healthy eaters."

Thea and Roy snort, Jon meets Oliver's eyes, his expression so hard it seems to have frozen his face into a mask. Oliver is sure he doesn't look that much better. That dry lightness of Felicity's tone didn't quite manage to hide from him the disgust beneath it, and even such small a thing scraps away at his nerves like sandpaper. He stares at Felicity's hollowed face and thinks back at how much smaller she'd felt in his arms, how the pronounced curves and dibs of her body have been shaved down to a knifes edge. Oliver looks and knowledge is heavy in him like a black stone falling*, because he knows it hasn't all been because of physical training and lack of fried food. Thea and Roy don't know what it is to be a captive, thank god, but both Jon and Oliver do. They know what it is to be kept at the edge of weakness, never quite fed, never quite rested, always on edge but never strong enough to do anything about it. Is that what happened to her? Or was it because of the pressure? Of the constant tension that sharpens you inside out and demands you abandon everything that does not function towards survival. Oliver knows that kind of erasure too.

What happened Felicity…

But he cant ask her that; she won't answer it. All he knows is what she gives them.

"I mean, maybe that's their problem." Felicity contemplates, oblivious to Oliver's corrosive thoughts. "Maybe if Darhk ate more comfort food he wouldn't go around shooting people."

"It's a theory." Digg says warmly, smiling at her. There is such fondness on his face, its impossible to miss.

"We should pitch it to him." Thea adds wryly.

Felicity's face goes carefully blank. "I tried. Didn't go over so well."

 _(Oliver tries to imagine that. Tries to imagine how Felicity talking back to Damien Darhk would go… and he feels the fine hairs on his arms prickle up.)_

"Super-villain fathers with control issues are not as much fun as everyone makes them out to be, huh." Thea remarks softening the bluntness of her words with the gentleness of her tone.

"Nope." Felicity pops her lips around the word, her whole demeanor studiously relaxed, down to the way she chews her burger. "But hey, look at the bright side."

There's a moment of silence as they wait for her to add to that, but Felicity just keeps munching on her burger.

"Which is?" Roy prompts.

A small frown of minimal confusion crinkling Felicity's brow. "Which is what?"

"You just said to look at the bright side." Roy reminds her expectantly.

Felicity lets out a long-suffering sigh. "It's just a figure of speech, Harper."

Roy rolls her eyes at her and this time Oliver feels it tug at the corner of his own lips as well.

"What's up with you anyway?" Felicity asks after a while, and this time it's a surprise because, though she sounds a bit hesitant, this is the first time Felicity has initiated conversation with them outside the technical stuff ( _or shown any kind of interest towards any of them, for that matter_ )

"What?"

"You're not eating." Felicity points out, glancing at Roy's barely touched burger. "Or is it that you're watching your silhouette, Abercrombie?"

The way the kid's eyes narrow and is lips thin is amusing and Oliver is not alone in that feeling.

" _Unbelievable_!" he mutters. "You don't remember anything but you remember _that_?! Really Blondie?"

Felicity tilts her head. "Huh. Not blonde anymore, Dolly."

Roy blinks. Thea cackles.

"What did you… _what_?!"

"Dolly. I like it." Thea winks at him.

" _No_!" comes the ready reply, complete with finger-pointing. Thea just blows Roy a kiss.

"He's upset that Sara kicked his ass earlier." Digg explains, ( _and Oliver doesn't miss that his eyes are alight with laughter the way they haven't ben in approximately nine months_ )

"She snuck up on me!" But even to Oliver's ears that sounds a bit too whiny.

"Right. And _then_ she kicked your ass." John continues, perfectly straight-faced. Roy says nothing, opting instead for grabbing his burger and ripping a big chunk off it.

"Sneak attacks don't count." he mumbles around his mouthful.

Felicity scrunches up her nose, throws a piece of fry at him. "Don't talk with your mouth full."

And it's such an simple action, so sincere and unaffected, that it makes Oliver's eyes sting, because _she's._ _right. there!_ and the knowledge pounds at him from the inside, draining him from everything else to the point where its a strain to even _breathe_ around her. Because beneath all the edges, the mistrust and blank spaces, there's _Felicity,_ and she is sitting not even four chairs away from him! She is right there! He saw her get shot, grieved for her with every bit of love he had in him, hasn't seen or touched her in _months_ ( _there are blanks in those months that last entire days, and days that are as long as a whole year_ ) and now she is _right there_ and can barely look at her in the face!

"I'm getting lessons in manners from Damien Darhk's kid." Roy tone is dry but he is smiling as he pops the fry Felicity threw at him into his mouth. "Talk about ironic."

Oliver tenses. Felicity snorts.

"Says the guy dating the Heir to the Demon." she deadpans without missing a beat. It takes her a very short moment to realize her misstep and when she does, Felicity stops breathing for a second. Around the table, they are all staring at her in various degrees of surprise.

"Ugh! Yeah, I know that Malcolm Merlyn is Ra's." She admits. "And for the record, I want to make this very clear from the start: I'm _not_ one of his greatest fans and - and that's like, the understatement of the century. Probably the millennium. No offence." she adds turning to Thea.

Thea blinks once.

"None taken." her response comes as if form numb lips.

"Good. I mean, just because I would gladly set Merlyn on fire, and I'm pretty sure I have this recurring dream where I staple his fingers to his face, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna do some weird projecting of that on you. Cause that would be majorly hypocritical. "

Thea manages a huff as she glances at Oliver, one that was supposed to be a laugh but was way too shocked to achieve its intended purpose. Felicity just nods it away, like its normal. Like its fine. ( _She always did that; embraced the more unhinged aspects of frail humanity like they were nothing. Like they were a right_.)

"You really hate him huh." Thea says, eyes trained on Felicity's face, straining for the smallest reaction.

"I really do." Felicity admits, in total peace with herself about it. Her shrug is more like an afterthought. "I mean, I _could_ make an effort to tolerate him, but I'd rather just hate him than be inconvenienced."

A tiny huff escapes Thea then, one that would have liked to have been a laugh but she was too stunned for it.

"Your feelings for Malcolm aren't exactly a surprise, you know." she points out. "Nor are you alone on that department."

"Nope, you're not." John Diggle affirms. "How do you know that he is the Demon's Head though?"

Felicity looks up to see his blank face, catches all the layers of other, different questions beneath that single one. She glances at the way Harper clenched his jaw, a muscle in his cheek ticking and that was reaction enough. When she turns her to Oliver Queen however, Felicity finds herself pinned by his eyes, by the unrestrained animosity in them and how it seemed to harden his face into blankness ( _she knew, then and there, that though he had chosen not to be a killer anymore, he sure as hell was still capable of it. As the old saying goes, if looks could kill…_ )

"It's not exactly something they advertised, cause that would be weird. I know because of circumstantial reasons, i guess."

Yeah, that's not gonna fly and Felicity knows it ( _and not only because Oliver Queen's eyes darken at her words_ ). But she'd rather they pull the answers from her with pliers than give herself away too early.

"You've met him." He says then, voice dangerously low, almost mumbling the words. "He's _seen_ you."

Felicity nods. ( _don't fidget, don't look down, don't blink_ )

"Yeah."

Oliver Queen looks down, shakes his head once, looks back up.

"W-when did you meet him?" He is trying so hard to keep a lid on it and all it does is make his stumble over the word, voice thick with emotion. And all Felicity can think is: How does she answer that with truth and not get herself in trouble?

( _Oliver can read the way she processes everything about him in that moment, as if her thoughts were scrolling across her forehead. He notices every single shade of her apprehension. He decides to push forward anyway just around the time when she decides to give him the truth._ )

"He first saw me face to face maybe two months after I woke up."

Between lying and omitting, the line becomes a thin one, but all Felicity has to do to keep her head, is decide which things could kill her if she spoke of them and which could not. And telling Oliver Queen about how ( _and more importantly, by whom_ ) Malcolm Merlyn had known she was alive even _before_ he ever saw her - that would earn her a real interrogation this time, and not of the gentle variety. ( _she knows enough of him to know that_ ). It's not that she doesn't _want_ to tell him. Wanting has nothing to do with it. She's just so _tired_! Opening that can of worms would have her going at it for hours on end and she has other things that need to get done.

So she stares back at Oliver Queen's intense… everything and focuses on how _pretty_ he is ( _he really is better than the pictures, who could have thought?_ ) instead of the 'I know you're hiding something' look he's giving her.

Thea Queen cuts through the growing tension with an abrasiveness that Felicity is starting to think is characteristic of her.

"So. My evil dad and your evil dad exchange friendship bracelets. That's…" She shakes her head, words seemly lacking.

"Uncomfortable to witness, mostly." Felicity fills in. "It used to make me wonder why you guys hadn't thought about just stepping back and letting those two kill each other. If we're lucky, they still might."

"What do you mean?" John Diggle immediately asks "According to our intel, there is an alliance between Merlyn and Darhk."

"Oh yeah, they are super-buds." Felicity sounds unaffected as ever, but there is no mistaking the contemptuous curl of her lips. "They have long winded discussions about copyright and the integrity of intellectual property."

The collective expression of the room was a silent ' _what?!_ ' that Felicity shakes off as she bites into her now-cold fry.

"Merlyn throws bitchfits because he totally tried to destroy Starling first and claims that the previous Ra's just copied him with no respect for originality." The corrosive irony in her tone made the flatness of it almost a joke. "It's a thrill."

"You ever join these conversations?" John Diggle asks her.

"I don't know their secrets, if that's what you're wondering. Ok, I know _some_ , I admit it, but I never was part of the inner circle. Darhk never really trusted me and Merlyn flat out hates me."

"Really?" Thea Queen sounds honestly surprised, which makes absolutely no sense to Felicity.

"Oh yeah, really."

"Huh. I always got this vibe of begrudged respect from him in your case. He sure took you more seriously than everyone else."

Felicity looks at Thea as if the other girl has just said she has another pair of eyes at the back of her head or something, but then shakes her head as if to shake of her thoughts.

"Yeah, no. That is way off base: Merlyn plain old hates me. As in, he would gladly jab sharp things into me. And there is also the bow accident to consider."

The look at her expectantly. Felicity tries to fidget, she really does.

"I may or may not have lost a bet, a couple of months back." And once she starts, Felicity finds herself vomiting it all out. "And it wasn't my idea anyway, but the idiot couldn't do it himself cause he has no idea how aerodynamics and engineering really works, not enough to be subtle about it anyway, so he kinda dared me into it… And I guess I'm not that much smarter because I ended up doing it even though I knew it could probably get us killed."

"Did what?" And Oliver Queen's expression is positively thunderous, so much that it makes Felicity bite her lip to hold back the smile. Smiling in the face of that look didn't seem like a good idea, self-preservationally speaking, but she couldn't help it.

"I may or may not have tinkered with Merlyn's collapsible bow that one time and it… may or may not have hit him in the balls when he tried to use it."

You would hear a pin drop in the silence those words caused; that is, if Felicity were inclined to actually drop one, or if she even had one – two things that were not her priorities at the moment. She feels the flutter of nervousness returning - but then Thea Queen and Roy Harper melt in peals of laughter and even John Diggle's shoulders start shaking of it. She notices all this from the corner of her eyes however because wow, Oliver Queen can _smile_.

And not only does he smile – that is… it's the smiliest smile that has ever been smiled[2] and he's looking _right at her_ as he shakes his head a little, as if he can't believe it. And sure, the man is ridiculously pretty and Felicity is hyper aware of him for a multitude of reasons – first among them fact that she's believed for a while that he'd tried to kill her and she can't just turn that off now, just because she's starting to doubt everything in whole new ways. ( _the way he stares at the back of her head constantly doesn't make her feel exactly safe either_ ). But what Felicity feels right in that moment, is so very far beyond that. The warm jolt that shakes her insides scares and confuses her, because he stares and it's as if he's actually _seeing_ her, with that _look_ in his eyes, that expression on his face…

(… _so sad, so sweet, so unguarded. It clogs her throat with unnamed emotion, her eyes fog over and her head feels light, until she has to look away, because nothing makes sense anymore)_ Feelings without reason or rhyme clash inside her so violently that they make her chest feel too small of her heart. Felicity has to gulp and try to control her breathing, feeling the first catches of anxiety settling in. A familiar whisper ( _a secret she's forgotten_ ) starts growing at the edges of her consciousness and its presence shoves itself hard against her mind, the force of its push clashing with the void that is Felicity's memory. And it's because of this that Felicity knows, without really knowing, that something about this is important. That there is something _else_ here, something huge lying in wait ( _she'd always thought he pulled such a strong reaction out of her because he'd tried to kill her, but now… now_ _she doubts. And for the first time, she does so free of guilt_ ).

Her instincts scream at her to remember and Felicity _tries_ , she really does. ( _her nails bleed for how hard she digs them against the unyielding emptiness inside her_ ) But it all feels futile; like screaming for remembrance against the ghost of a déjà vu. Nothing is there to be found – the void in her mind like an open raw wound, only the pulsating hurt around the damaged tissue remains of her memories - and Felicity is left confused and hurt and scared.

She closes her eyes, breathes through her nose to keep the tears at bay. It's always like this when she tries to remember. She starts, clings, fully aware by now that she's bound to fail. It hasn't brought her to tears in a long while though…

"I just keep replaying that image in my head and it only gets better!" Harper manages to say between fits of giggles. "Oh wow, I can't believe it."

"You better." Felicity mumbles ( _she had felt the bruises for that little act of rebellion for_ weeks _afterwards and she hadn't been alone in that_ ) Her voice is hardly steady, but good enough.

"You pranked the Demon's Head." Oliver Queen says, enunciating every word.

Oh, if only he knew.

"Again, _not_ my idea. _Decapitating_ the Demon's Head would have been more my speed, but alas…"

She shrugs and knows that she has to stop mentioning having had help because the more she does, the higher the chances of them asking her about it. Part of her wants them to ( _she is full of multitudes tonight_ ) Part of her wonders just how elastic these bounds she has been granted really are.

She smiles at him. It's calculated this time. "Wondering how I'm still alive?"

Oliver Queen's lips twitch. ( _It might be a smile, it might be a grimace_.) "Wondering how you find people that are your kind of insane and how you get them to do what you want."

Felicity sighs. "I _told_ you..."

"Not your idea, right." the look he gives her says he doesn't believe it for a moment.

They look at each other and they are both smiling and it's right then that she knows: he is not going to ask, is he? He wants to, but he's not going to and for the first time Felicity starts to feel the truth of it. That these people might be friends after all.

 _Huh..._

"Oh… Oh, my god." Thea Queen says brokenly as she looks up, teary eyed and flushed with mirth. "Felicity Smoak… I now pledge my undying love to you, from this day on, because you are brilliant."

Felicity's smile loses the plastic edge, softens. ( _the most misplaced wave of nostalgia strikes her, and all she can think of is how young Roy Harper and Thea Queen are, to be living this kind of life_ )

"Oh yeah, brilliant pretty much describes me." Felicity consents with a nod that is only half serious, and then bites her lip. "Huh, I sense I'm gonna fall off a chair pretty soon just to prove that wrong."

"Gotta say that the mental picture of Merlyn hitting himself in the nuts with his bow – it kinda takes away his edge a bit." John Diggle admits, huge smile on his face, as he leans back on his chair.

"Yeah well, it was bound to happen." Thea relents as she tries to catch her breath. "Nothing lasts forever."

"Some things do." Oliver Queen points out quietly, shoving the conversation completely out of its original context really, because his voice is so soft, it can't be further away from the joke his sister was making. ( _he is looking straight at her as he says it and all that ache of a ghost-organ missing somewhere inside her throbs with new intensity. It was supposed to be dread, but it's really not, is it?_ ) Thea Queen doesn't notice however, or doesn't care, as she turns a teasing smile on her brother that spells ' _you're such a sap_ ' so clearly that even Felicity can read it.

"What? Like friendship?"

"Love?" Harper drawls, straight-faced.

( _they think they're being such cute smartasses, don't they_?)

"Herpes…" Felicity butts in, tone studiously casual.

John Diggle snorts, his laughter taking him by surprise. Harper chokes on his drink ( _Felicity pats herself metaphorically on the back_ ) and Thea Queen guffaws like a kid. She grabs Felicity's hand as if to hold on to it as laughter shakes her, a gesture so full of familiarity that it makes a bubble of warms swell behind Felicity's ribcage before she can even think to be cautious.

There's no reason really, why she should look up in that moment, except that she can feel his eyes on her and she is drawn to them. ( _at this point, Felicity knows asking why is just a waste of time so she doesn't_ ) The smile that dazed her before has since grown warmer, a dreamy sort of hopefulness clinging at the edges of his eyes. And it scares the living daylight out of her, it really does, because it's like standing with your nose pressed against the surface of something _huge_ , without knowing if it's the most amazing thing you've ever seen in your life or a monster that will eat you alive, because from that close you can only see a tiny inch of it.

His eyes are the bluest she's ever seen though, and the way he looks at her makes everyone and everything else in her head go really quiet. If that has happened to Felicity before, she doesn't remember it. And she feels threadbare by the most recent turns of her life, so this time when she feels the edges of her mind push at her to remember something that simply isn't there, she ignores it. Instead she allows herself to fall into this muted conversation with a man who makes her feel weirdly aware of every inch of herself, like she's standing too close even though she's nowhere near him.

( _She looks at him with eyes clouded by insecurity, and yet_ fixed _on him just as steadily as they have ever been. And Oliver remembers how months ago they had been laying on a thick blanket with no other soul around them for miles and miles, looking at the clouds slowly uncovering the full moon in silence. Remembers how, wordlessly, without any prompting at all, Felicity had sat up on her knees. How she had slowly loosened, knot by knot, the strings of her dress, looking at him with the perfect calm of certainty, her smile (her_ love _) breathtaking. How the silk had slipped off her and she'd fitted herself on top of him, around him, smooth dewy skin and nothing else; leaned her head towards him, kept herself there close, sharing a breath as she cupped his face in both hands and kissed him with such softness, such heart-shattering gentles… She'd peeled off his clothes layer by layer and then peeled back his skin too with the same tenderness; sunk her fingers right into the center of his soul just as he felt himself slip into hers, the warmest, rightest place he'd ever known. Right there in the open, with the stars watching, he had felt perfect, he'd felt loved and infinite, all the way to the marrow of his bones where that feeling had burrowed there to stay._

 _And that moment is no longer a shared secret anymore, but mere memory now…_ his _memory. A miserable feeling wraps itself around his heart, makes him face the truth: that love lives in his bones unshakable and part of who he is… and it has the capacity to undo him, because he is lonely in it. She's right there, yes, but the essence of them, together, doesn't live in her anymore. Her eyes are void of it._

 _But that's not her fault. It's not. And he would never give up on her even at the edge of hope, even down the spiral of bleakness. Never. And therein lurks the potential for destruction._ )

It's a strange thing to Felicity, to observe these people from so close. To see them being people, eating burgers, joking among themselves ( _strange to be the focus of their attention like she holds the world with every word she traps under her tongue.)_ But who is she kidding anyway. She isn't thinking of any general 'theme here. She is thinking about _him_. Very specifically so.

Trying to reconcile the reality of the man she is looking at, with the Oliver Queen she has read about, is… startlingly difficult. The Island, Hong Kong, Russia - it had all been in that file handed to her like homework. It had detailed how the same Oliver Queen who has now landed himself on the very top of HIVE's hit-list, had been personally trained by its leader and not so long ago, killed without question on his orders. A fact that is both deeply ironic and just as confusing. Queen's file described a stone-cold killer… and there is no easy way to explain how _that_ can fit with the man who looks at her with an expression so open, he might as well be her favorite book. ( _the deep sadness behind his smile feels alarmingly disconcerting, especially because at the sight of it, the same answering feeling blooms in her chest like a wound_ )

Trying to think about it makes the spot behind her ears throb painfully, and Felicity decides that, because it's easier and because she hasn't slept in nearly 48 hours, limiting herself to contemplating how pretty Oliver Queen is, is a preferable course of action and by far the least dangerous. ( _she has an errant thought or two about how he would look beneath her, hips trapped by her thighs, or his head between them. That whole line of thought disconcerts her so much she actually feels hot under her collar so she focuses on simpler things…_ ) For one, his smile is a slayer all into itself. ' _Just grin and I'll put down the weapon'_ , she thinks as she looks away. ' _Arrows are way overrated anyway – smiles are way more efficient'_. The thought of her Darhk making an ' _aww_ ' face at Oliver Queen's smile is so ridiculous it makes her snort… but then she realizes that she has four pairs of eyes glued to her face and _fuck_ , but she actually said that last part aloud didn't she? Of course she did.

Felicity actually rolls her eyes, exasperated at herself. "Because of course I would say that aloud. Murmuring is not thinking Felicity, but what is my life without it!"

"Actually, compared to your usual stuff, that's pretty mild." Harper points out and if that's supposed to make her feel better it doesn't work, so Felicity limits herself to hunching her shoulders and glaring at the kid's ridiculous face.

"Besides, you're right! He does have a killer smile. Don't you Ollie?"

Felicity can only imagine the kind of glare Oliver Queen is throwing his sister. She imagines because she will not be stupid enough to make herself a part of this conversation. God knows what would come out of her mouth.

"And they're like an eclipse too, so enjoy it while it lasts." Harper throws in with a wink. Felicity flips him off. ( _though she has to admit his lightness and general non-caring attitude have a certain appeal. The little shit is funny._ )

"You know Roy, most species bare their teeth as a threat. It is a reminder that clenched jaws can, and will, open your throat." And Oliver Queen actually _smiles_ at that, thin and darkly amused. "Maybe you should think about that the next time I smile at you[3]."

Harper narrows his eyes, contemplating.

"Did you guys notice how morbid his humor has gotten since her vacation with evil incorporated. Cause I definitely noticed."

Queen's smile widens.

Harper cringes. "Stop that. You don't smile like _that_."

"I do when you're trying to be funny."

"I always thought…" Oliver Queen's focus shifts from Harper to Felicity so fast that it makes her stumble of a bit, but not enough, alas, to shut up, on the contrary: he looks and her mind goes blank for a moment, so she starts thinking with her mouth. "…I kinda had this thought that you kept stabbing yourself with your arrows because that had to be the reason you never ever smiled?"

 _Ooh_ , this hasn't happened to her in a while. But it's no surprise its happening now. Felicity feels uncertain and a very strange, unfamiliar kind of scared; but since _any_ kind of scared makes Felicity nervous and being nervous usually results in her saying the weirdest shit possible, well… there you have it. But this train-crash of thoughts doesn't last long, because John Diggle chuckles and Harper coughs because a bit of the coke went up his nose, but even _that_ can't cover Thea's laugh.

"I don't." Queen ells her and he sounds calm, amused even. "Stab myself with arrows, I mean."

His clarification feels more like a tease ( _and why oh why does he want to perpetuate the disaster that this conversation is promising to be_?!)

But she can't help herself. She doesn't like people taking the last word from her.

"Broody is your default mode then? Cause, no offence, but it doesn't photograph very well."

( _lips pressed together, curling up at the corners have her wondering, 'Do I know you?', but she doesn't dare say that out loud_ )

He minutely raises both eyebrows at her, and Felicity realizes with a small start that it probably sounds like she's telling him he looks bad in pictures or something.

"I mean, you don't look _bad_ , obviously; you just look angry in every picture. Not that I have been cyber-stalking you or anything… though you might agree that I _have_ , but that was work. Also, I've read your file… hence the… pictures." And that is like the perfect explanation in her head, but then Felicity actually _listens_ to the way it sounds coming out of her mouth – catches the shock on Oliver Queen's face as he absorbs them - and she wonders why does she even try to use words when her thoughts move so fast through her head that she only manages to catch the tail-end of two, out of ten of them. "That sounds even creepier, but really, I was in HIVE, so there's a certain level of creepiness in there that is expected. And you know what; I'm gonna stop talking now."

She takes a breath and holds it in for three seconds before releasing it. And to make sure that she actually does shut up this time and the compulsion to let her mouth do her thinking for her doesn't take over again, Felicity takes a huge chunk of her burger, firmly keeping her eyes on the almost finished fries and not looking up. If she had, she would have seen the expression on everyone's faces and would have understood exactly what she meant to these people. But as it was, she was too busy melting in her seat, mortified.

"You've read my file?"

If it weren't for the way he asks that, the hesitation in his tone, the way he sounds as if he almost fears her answer, Felicity would have answered in a completely different way. As it is, Felicity swallows, sits straighter and looks at him in the eye.

"Yes, I have. I've read all your files." She adds, looking around the table into each and every one of their faces. "You were my assignment, it was… kinda like homework, I guess."

Color drains from Queen's face and Felicity feels guilt and shame well up inside her, reasonless, placeless feelings that do not belong there. She doesn't owe him anything. Not to any of them. It's not like she had a choice.

Except, if that were true, if it were _right_ … then she wouldn't feel quite so much like wet shit, would she?

( _Oliver remembers when a harmless looking USB had come in the mail… Oliver's entire life history onto there – including bits that he had no idea anyone knew, let alone Darhk. Felicity had smashed it to pieces and flushed what was left of it down the toilet. God, she had been so angry. Now she probably knows the name of every single person he has killed… The thought chills Oliver's blood like nothing else, actually leaving him a little lightheaded._

 _'…_ I will kill you in every way I know you fear _.' That had been Darhk's promise. He was proving very adept in keeping it._ )

"And how thorough are those files?" Oliver dares.

Felicity's only hesitation is a blink.

"This is HIVE. How accurate do _you_ think they are?" There it is, his answer… but her voice gone small and soft and she's not even looking at him, she's looking at her hands on the table. Because, while she'd never cared about stepping into illegality if it was for a worthy cause, she draws a firm line whenever something felt _wrong_ , because that is who she is.

Oliver sighs.

"I admit though, I had a couple of laughs over your wrap-sheet of girlfriends." Felicity adds then, a little too breathless to be entirely casual. " Seriously, did nobody ever tell you about the ' _bros before apparent threats to national security[4]_ ' rule?"

His first reaction is to cringe, because… yeah. But there is nothing malicious or accusatory in her tone; on the contrary. So Oliver takes the peace offering and twitches his brows upward, disbelieving; gently teasing.

"Out of everything I have ever done, my _girlfriends_ are the ones that stick out to you?"

He knows by the sheer relief on her face that he's said the right thing.

"Oh come on! You can't tell me nobody has ever thought about. I mean, let's do a headcount. Once upon a time: the Black Canary, awesome lady who can kill you but probably won't. Ta-er al-Sahfer: a freaking _assassin_ who has come back from beyond so many times she should just start handing people cards saying ' _short version: not dead_ ' – also a deadly woman. The Huntress: nuttier than a ten pound fruitcake with lovely dissociative tendencies; trigger happy lady and giving the total of zero fucks about it. And my personal favorite, Isabel freaking Rochev…"

His reaction is knee-jerk reflex.

"She was never my _girlfriend_!"

Felicity dismisses him with an eyeroll. "Same difference. She actually worked for Darhk, did you know that?" The shell-shocked look on his ( _and everyone else's_ ) face tells her he didn't. Felicity feels like she could laugh, but she probably shouldn't. "Wow, ok this is worse than I thought. I shouldn't be poking fun at this."

He looks a bit lost for a moment, but then shakes his head and

"And what about you?" Thea teases as she looks from Felicity to her brother. She misses the warning in Oliver's eyes. "Super-hacker, cyber-terrorist extraordinaire, bomber and machine-gun wielder; seriously you have quite the curriculum and are an _actual_ threat to national security. You totally fit the list of dangerous deadly girlfriends."

Felicity's lips bow in a moue of disbelief. "Huh, you're misunderstanding the baseline here: being dangerous doesn't immediately mean that you're Oliver Queen's girlfriend. I was trying to distract you brother there from the seriously gross violation of his privacy - yours too, by the way – with awkward humor on his inclination for lethal women, while also implying it's a wonder he's still alive."

"Yeah. That's exactly what…"

" _Thea_!"

"What?!"

One look at Oliver's face and Thea knows she had probably just said something she shouldn't have. And in the three seconds it takes Thea to understand what that is, Felicity understands too.

Oliver watches the look of utter astonishment cross her face, her mouth slackening into a stunned ' _oh_ ' that reminds him of the very first time he'd told her that he loved her. ( _a whispered, desperate secret in a dark old house; so frail and new he'd been afraid voicing it would break it_ ).

Felicity turns to look at him ( _Oliver prepares for her eyes the way he would for any other gut-wound_ ) and she doesn't even need to ask if it's true, honestly. It's _right there_ on his face and it makes such sense that she feels stupid for not realizing it - or the full extent of it, anyway - sooner. Of course she used to be with him. Suddenly the way Oliver Queen behaves around her makes a whole lot ( _more_ ) sense. ( _it explains the way he looks at her, maybe even the way she can't look at_ him _for too long_ )

Of course… of _course_ …

God, she feels so stupid. Pathetic really. Because it's not so difficult to understand now, that connection, that pull she feels. The meaning behind it. The way he looks at her, as if she means something…

He is not looking at _her_ at all, is he? Not really, anyway; none of them are. None of them see _her_. They just see this girl they lost, and that now has come back to them like a stranger wearing the skin of someone they once loved. She is not the Felicity they remember. She doesn't even know who that person was, never mind how to _be_ her!

But Felicity doesn't hold it against them, not really. She can't blame them for looking straight through her, searching for a person that simply isn't there anymore. After all, she searches for that person all the time. No, she doesn't blame them. But with _him,_ its different. With _him_ , it feels absurdly like betrayal. It makes Felicity feel small and silly for even thinking it was possible. It makes all the heaviness of her solitude crash on her back, and she draws her shoulders in to bear it. It has never felt more lonely to be trapped inside this body, and that is saying something.

She has nobody to blame but herself for this. She knew this would happen, but she had chosen to ignore it, because she had seen these close-kit group of people who loved each other and she had _wanted_. She'd wanted to stop being afraid, stop running. She'd wanted to just take a breath and feel it; feel a _connection_ to another living person. To feel something that _meant_ something! And they kept trying so hard to make space for her while she wiggled like a fish out of water trying to fall into spaces that simply did not fit.

It's only then that she realizes how she had been on the verge of making the same mistake here that she had made months ago, with HIVE. How she had tried to imagine herself _here_ because she was afloat and longed for solid ground beneath her feet. Damien Darhk had used that weakness against her, but it couldn't compare to what Felicity had just done to herself. Darhk's brand of violence against her couldn't be helped, it was ultimately part of who he was. No, the worst kind of violence was the one Felicity insisted on doing to herself[1], manipulating herself into thorny corners like this.

She closes her eyes and takes deep breaths for long moments, staving off the grief. The most basic truth was that she belongs nowhere and she needs to accept that as of right now. She is a 26 year old woman with the a memory that stretches for only nine months' worth of life. Everywhere she will go looking for herself, people will just keep looking straight through her… and she was so fucking tired of that.

 _This ends tonight._

This is just another mission. She'd be done with it, put a bullet through her Darhk's head, put Merlyn six feet under and then make a new life for herself somewhere far away. Far away and sunny. There has to be sun, she decides. And beaches, and someplace she could actually see the stars at night. And there, in that place, when she finally reaches it, none of this would matter.

"Felicity… I'm sorry. I should have kept my mouth shut. You really don't need the extra pressure right now."

Felicity turns to Thea and for the first time, she doesn't hide. She is tired and worn so thin she was a breath away from tearing, but more than anything, she is tired of being handled with gloves.

"Don't apologize for something like that. I've been taken for a mushroom for way too long. This is _my_ life; I want to know things." And then Felicity turns to Oliver Queen, who looks like it's taking him all the strength of those impressive shoulders to keep still. His thumb and index finger keep brushing together and the way he looks at her…

The way he looks at her is not real. Not to _her_. Not right now.

"I'm sorry for poking fun. It seems it was in way more bad taste than it sounded." Her apology comes out more awkward than sincere, but he must see through it. He takes a deep breath and gives her a little nod. ( _his eyes all soft and as raw as an open wound… who_ is _this person? How does he manage to make a whole conversation with just a look? How does_ she _manage to actually understand him? Which one of these things is stranger?!_ )

"It wouldn't be the first time you have poked fun at the 'wrap-sheet of psycho exes actually'. There's a certain familiarity to it." Queen says calmly, the corners of his lips itching upwards in the smallest smile she's ever seen. Felicity doesn't have it in her to mirror him this time.

"Ok. How about a change of topic?" the words can't come out of her mouth fast enough once she realizes she's been staring at him.

Thea seconds it. "Great idea."

"Why a mushroom?" Harper asks immediately, almost as if he'd barely been waiting for a opening. Felicity blinks at him, caught off guard. ( _she could kiss him for it, really_ )

"What?"

"Why…"

"I heard you the first time Harper." But before Felicity can get to the explanation, Thea Queen has beaten her to it.

"You keep mushrooms in the dark and you feed them shit, Roy." Thea enunciates every word with deliberate slowness ( _and it makes Oliver Queen wince_ ). She leans towards Felicity, eyes full of wry understanding. "Trust me, I know the feeling. I've been there for like, wow, half my life. So yeah, welcome to the club. It's not awesome but we hand out great T-shirts and vengeance packages. The benefits are a real killer."

Queen groans, Harper winces. Felicity looks straight into Thea Queen's razor-smile… and mirrors it.

"Sounds like a hoot."

"How about you give us the bad and worse news you were taking about earlier?" John Diggle proposes diplomatically.

Felicity sighs. "Maybe tomorrow. It can keep. Mostly it's about security upgrades and stuff like that."

The morning after, Felicity tells them all the big news. She explains the security system upgrades, updates their HIVE database ( _they knew little more than half of HIVE's capabilities and that was just plain sad_ ). And that is the easy part. The hard part comes when she has to tell them that from all the digging she did in the little nanites in her brain ( _and Caitlin's scans_ ) it turns out that her memory loss is in fact no memory loss at all. That the nanites in her head have been programmed to repress her memories and she has no idea how to undo that programming without alerting HIVE of her exact location, or activating a security protocol that would ignite an explosion and blow her sky-high, and about three blocks around her too.

( _Her fingers pause on the keyboard when she finds that out._

 _'_ _Well, that's just rude.'_

 _Her flat tone reaches Oliver Queen's ears. Of course it does._

 _'_ _What is?'_

 _She startled and gave him an accusing glare, to which he responded by taking a step back and showing her his palms, hunching his shoulders like that could ever make him smaller. She explains him and whoever else listening the situation, watches his face darken with violence. He has this thing he does, where his face goes blank and his lips thin and whiten and, if possible, his eyes get bluer. He looks just about ready to kill someone. Not one of Felicity's favorite looks ever, and she'd like to avoid it whenever she can._

 _'_ _It's like he knew all along that I would find this out and wanted me to never even try to do something about it.'_

 _The pinch between his eyebrows questions her._

 _Felicity sighs. 'You don't need that kind of caliber of explosion to kill someone, if the bomb is in their head. Even a burst of electricity, if calibrated right, could do it and the most it would outwardly show is with a nosebleed or something.'_

 _Comprehension dawns on him, and it makes his stomach drop like it receive evacuation orders from his cortex._

 _'_ _And that wouldn't have been enough to stop you from trying, would it?' he says as if through numb lips._

 _Felicity shrugs stiffly, her smile bitter. She doesn't know if she's ever tasted hatred quite like this before. It's really starting to feel like poison; she has to concentrate on not letting her obscure her thinking._

 _'_ _Nope, it wouldn't have.' And Darhk knew it too, the sick fuck. It makes her want to scream that he knows her to this particular level. 'But the lives of a couple thousand people… yeah, that would make me hesitate.'_

 _Felicity is too caught up in her resentment to see how Oliver steps back from behind her chair, how his hand rubs hard over his bone-pale face, as if he's trying to peel his skin off. Even if she'd seen it she wouldn't have understood. She wouldn't be able to know how frightening it was for him to listen to her and feel like she was reckless with her own life; the same life of hers he would_ cheerfully _die to protect. He couldn't explain to her how deeply he felt the sharp bite of irony, that coldhearted bitch, at being at the other side of this… where she had stood for years.)_

That is still nothing compared to when she tells them ( _tells_ him _, really. Him and Thea Queen, because in this, they are the two that will take it hardest_ ) that HIVE is not as united as it looks and neither is the League of Assassins. That there is a coupe being set in motion to bring them both down from within and all they had to do is prepare, and do their part. They ask for the name of her 'inside man' and Felicity replies 'The Dark Archer', and some roll their eyes, others straighten spines.

But when she tells them that there is Thomas Merlyn under that mask, the silence that falls is almost unnatural. Oliver Queen blanches, his breathing speeds up, his hands shake. Felicity is almost out of her chair and on her way to him when a shaky Thea grabs his hand and tells him to sit down ( _she didn't even realize the impulse was there until she was getting ready to spring to her feet. More than Thea Queen intervening, her own reaction stopper her in her tracks_ )

"Sit _down_ Oliver! Please."

He does. Docile as a sedated tiger, he sits, and looks at Felicity with the eyes of a boy, pleading.

She doesn't even think about it. One night ago, not eve 24 hours, she had told herself this was just another mission. Now she sits in front of him, tells him everything she knows and hopes it takes that look away from his face because she cannot stand it without wanting to touch him and she's being ridiculous. Nothing's changed – she still feels like a ghost when he looks at her. _Nothing_ has changed.

This will be over soon, she tells herself.

(but not really. Not at all. She will break and rearrange again, before everything comes to a close.)

* * *

[1] Inspired by het same quote ( _almost_ the same – its prettier there) in _Sense8_ : Nomi says it to Lito in the Diego Rivera museum

* An expression similar to the one used in 'Gladiator' from Maximus, when he is talking to the emperor in the begging of the movie about how long he has been away form home.

* 'Like a black stone falling'; taken from 'Deathless' by Kathryn M. Valente.

[1] I hope I'm not reaching here, but I have always thought that Felicity is very perceptive and instinctive about people, and that in John's case in particular, she seemed to know right from the start that he was a good man (… _you look like the kind of guy it would bother_.)

[2] A reviewer of the show describing Oliver's smile when Felicity saves him in the ATOM suit. I DO NOT own it, just thought it was the perfect phrase to describe that smile and it stuck with me.

[3] Source:

[4] Totally stole this one from the incorrect-arrow-quotes on tumblr, because it was too funny not to. Its not an Arrow quote, of course, i dont know the origin. But it fits like a glove ;P


	5. 5

_5\. I loved the pilgrim soul in you (the sorrows of your changing face)_

 _How many loved your moments of glad grace,  
_ _And loved your beauty with love false or true,  
_ _But_ _ **one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,  
**_ _And_ _ **loved**_ _ **the sorrows of your changing face**_ _;_

 _William Butler Yeats_

 _"_ _Tell me something you like."_

They've been on the road for two weeks. Her chin is propped on his shoulder and he can feel her breath against the side of his face that is not stuffed in the fluffy pillows.

He smiles.

He likes the way her breasts are pressed flat against his back; how he can feel the entire length of her against him, against the back of his thighs, his calves. He likes that he's been spending more time inside her than not, and likes everything in between; the way she'd smiled when she'd heard his breath catch with surprise that time they found out that the backs of his knees are way more sensitive than he remembered, or how she made fun of him because ' _who else on the planet has ticklish_ hipbones _, Oliver?_ ' ( _How she'd found that out was a fun story, too._ ) He likes everything about her and the fact that when he's between her legs, she presses the soles of her feet up and down the back of his calves, and how she curls her toes and pulls at the tiny hairs of his legs, how that sends stupidly strong shivers up his spine.

"I like peas." He says around a gravely chuckle.

The flat of her palm smacks against his ribs. It tickles… and he likes it just a little bit.

"This is serious business Queen. Focus."

"Ok, ok. I'm serious." He mumbles, voice still thick with sleep. He feels deliciously wrung out and lazy, and that ball of warmth in his chest melts, filling him all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes. God, he's so happy. Happy and in love and it's the most perfect feeling he's known because it's not weighted down by anything. Feathery happiness, he feels that light! ( _There is no place for guilt between them, not so long as they can talk about it, and_ god _have they…_ )

He really doesn't have to think about it that long; just says the first thing that pops into his mind. ( _she's all around him, of course she'd be first_ )

"I like how saltwater and sunshine smells on you. And that sunscreen thing, the cocnonut one. I love that." It makes her smell warm and so alive, like she has the summer under her skin. "I like the way seawater makes you taste. I like-"

Her kiss lands softly on top of his shoulder. Several, in a row, until she's reaches the back of his neck and his toes are curling in the sheets when she nuzzles there, soft lips and wet mouth, her red-tipped fingers reaching up, linking with his beneath the pillow, kissing a path up jaw. He sighs and then it turns into a hum deep in his chest when she tugs at his earlobe with her lips.

"I want you to tell me something you like that is not about me." She says the words close by his ear, sending shivers of awareness down his spine. "Something that is just yours."

Felicity's words are soft, spoken in a whisper almost, but her request stills him. She feels it. Oliver opens his eyes, turns his head and she moves from laying on top of him, to laying by his side, so that he can see her face, like she knows he wants to. One hand stays linked with his, the other plays with the short hair at the base of his neck.

It appeases him, her touch; anchors him to quietness, to the calm he sees in her eyes. She knows it; maybe that's why she hardly blinks when she's looking at him. ( _he'll know later that it's because she studies him as closely as he does her_ )

"What do you mean?" He asks carefully.

Her hand trails up over the back of his head. His hair is still a barely there buzz, soft and spiky beneath her fingers and Oliver knows she likes the way it tickles her palm a little, just barely – she's told him so. Looking at her now, he also knows that whatever it is she means, this is not about cutting herself out of his life. This is about something else. And it's important to her; Oliver can see it in her eyes, the seriousness of her face even as her love shines through.

"It can me something small, or silly I don't know. I just… I want to hear you chose something for yourself." Felicity says and that makes Oliver blink in confusion.

"I chose you." He says it as if that's the answer to every question possible. And it is, to him. It makes Felicity smile, joyful and soft ( _even as her eyes get really shiny_ ). That's _his_ smile – the one she saves for him alone when its quiet and she's rolling around in the love she feels for him. ' _like a kid making snow angels_ ' she'd told him, it had made him laugh. It's intimate and theirs, this moment, and they are both still so stricken with how they feel for each other, that sometimes it's hard to contain these feelings and they leak out. ( _most of the times they end up a tangled mess of moans and sweaty limbs, whispers and shouts; sometimes they end up talking in the dark about things they haven't told anyone; other times it makes them fight and_ then _end up tangled and sweaty_ )

This time she smiles as the back of her fingers traces the line of his cheek.

"You did. And it's better than I ever…" her voice breaks and Felicity stops. She takes a deep breath, and Oliver sees the resolve take shape in her eyes. She gently takes herself out of his embrace, sits up cross-legged in front of him. He makes to follow her, to sit up, but she stops him easily, with one hand on his chest. So Oliver just props himself on the pillow, looking up at her, waiting. Felicity takes both his hands into hers, resting them on her lap. ( _the action reminiscent of another time she'd done just that; a time in the mountains, in a room full of candles. She is always touching him now, but it's different when there is something heavy and true she wants to say_ )

"I have seen you put people's safety and their wellbeing before yours for so long. It's one of the things about you that makes me love you more, if you can believe it." she smiles and it's a bit sad, right there at the edges. Oliver knows why, too: it's must hurts to love him more for that very side of him that, more often than not, leads him to really stupid decisions. "You chose to be with me and that's _fantastic_ , but I… I want _everything_ for you, Oliver."

She whispers it as if it's a heavy secret. As if just saying it aloud will break something ( _it's_ _too soon to say this, but she's been watching him sleep all morning. There are no nightmares in daylight, only a small, wondrous smile curving his lips, and the depth of how much she feels for him_ consumes _her. I love you feels scarce, it feels thin. She has no words for what she feels, it leaves her literally speechless. She wants_ everything _for him, more than she's ever wanted anything for herself_ …) She shouldn't have dreaded: all Oliver hears behind those words is ' _I love you_ '. That's all he feels.

Felicity lays her words on him gently, careful of each and every one of them and Oliver feels the sway she holds over him _pull_ like a string knotted somewhere beneath his left rib, just by his heart. He needs to understand what she needs, what she means. Her hold on his hands tightens, her eyes… The look in her eyes makes Oliver strain towards her, without moving an inch.

 _Tell me…_

Because the last time she's looked at him that way, she'd been telling gripping her hand over his heart like she'd been trying to peel back the layers of armor with her tiny fingers. _'…fight to live'_

"I love you." Felicity says ( _and he feels his heart respond with an aching twist_ ) " _So much_ … and loving you means that I want you to choose things for yourself. _'This is_ my _life and_ this _is what I chose to do with it._ I' _m important._ I _matter._ ' I want to hear you say that more than anything. I have never met, or even heard about, anyone who deserves that more that you do."

She watches him gulp ( _he's looking at her with a kind of open wonder and gentle sweetness that she was starting to get used to, little by little. The kind of look that said 'I love you' unguardedly, without reserve_ ) and then nod minutely, almost without moving, before reaching for her face with both hands. Felicity goes to him, lets herself be pulled into him for a kiss and then another. Her thumb traces the small line that a tear made as it slipped from his eyes and down his temple. She knows she's overwhelmed him – she feels overwhelmed herself, but it gets better as they share the feeling between them. The pressure of it lessens, sweetens, as she brackets his waist with her thighs, kissing him deeper. He hasn't stopped touching her since he reached for her and it's familiar, the way his arms hold her so tight, how his hands touch her everywhere, open-palmed and greedy for her, same as she is for him. The way he gently tilts them until they're side by side and how he curls around her, waiting to be taken. She does, easily: one leg slips over his hips, pulls him closer and she fits herself over him like second nature. She can't stop kissing him when they're like this, but the feel of him so close, so deep, it hitches her breath and Felicity finds herself panting close to his mouth, starving for everything. He's right there with her, nice and slow and chest to chest, as they roll and he's pressing her down on soft covers from hips to breasts, rubbing against her inside out in a way that makes her throw her head back, searching for air and wanting to drown at the same time. She feels his scratchy kisses start at the base of her neck and she curls around him, edging him on, ' _more, faster, deeper_ '. When he reaches the spot under her ear she arches right into him, meeting halfway and taking him in harder, making them both moan. Control slips and sweetness mingles with hot desire but he's determined to undo her gently. Determined to love sweetly.

She tilts her chin head, wet lips skimming his cheek, wanting a kiss and he's there, licking inside her mouth, opening her wide and tangling her tongue with his just as he comes back into her just a little bit harder, because he can't help it, the way he almost whites-out as pleasure builds. He drowns his moans in her neck, in her mouth, swallowing hers until she's shaking and fingers are grasping at the back of his neck tightly, eyes wide and dewy as heat overtakes her and spills over. Her thighs shake same as her insides do around him and his eyes almost slip closed as he feels her hold, hot and wet, tighten like a fist, making little stars appear at the edges of his vision. But it's the way she calls his name that sends him spiraling, almost at the same moment she does.

The world comes into focus at the point of a needle and they stare at each other almost cross-eyed with the force of it, but still there, wave after wave, until all its left is a gentle rocking against each other, trembling limbs and tiny whimpers.

He catches his breath at her throat, heart still flying, but more aware with every second of the kisses she is trailing up the column of his neck, the way one leg is locked around his hip and the other keeps traveling up and down his calves, her curling toes gently pulling at his hair there every once in a while – and he smiles even as the shiver counts his vertebrae and settles at the base of his spine. He turns his face to her just as her lips reach his cheek. He melts in that kiss. There is nothing beyond it, nor beyond this moment. In this moment he is closer to her than ever. He could not be more hers than he is now, even if he found a way to actually live under her skin.

Later, she sits in his lap as they eat breakfast on one of the tables outside. The white canopy keeps the sun at bay but the heat of the day warms them both and he knows Felicity loves it. Her legs dangle: she can't touch the floor even with the tips of her toes from how she is sitting, so she swings them back and forth absentmindedly. She has forgone cutlery, choosing to eat her pancakes with her hands; she offers him a bite and Oliver takes it, just so that he can get to lick the maple syrup off her fingers. But then he looks her in the eye and tells her something simple.

"I like fruit for breakfast, usually. I can it anything, but fruit is my favorite."

Felicity stills… and then smiles at him wide – struggling with her smile really, because she was chewing on her bite of pancake, and her face looks so funny he has to laugh. But then she grabs a strawberry and holds it out to him.

He eats that one off her fingers too.

 _'…_ _go ahead. Start small, and tell me something you like…'_

 _"_ Oliver? _Oliver!"_

He snaps out of the memory sharply, jerking as if someone had just hit him with a bucket of cold water.

"What?"

Thea narrows her eyes at him but form annoyance her expression shifts to compassion so fast that he has to wonder what the hell she is seeing in him. A fraction of a second later he realizes his face is wet and he exhales tiredly, lifting both hands to wipe away the tears.

God, he's exhausted…

"What is it Thea?" Oliver asks, more gently this time. He hears his sister sigh heavily. She walks in, closes the door behind her.

"This has to stop." Thea says, coming closer. She sounds tired but her voice carries the kind of non-negotiable note that tells him she's determined. "You _need_ to sleep Ollie."

How can he though? He keeps waking up because the room next to his is where Felicity sleeps and she doesn't sleep more than three hours in a row. Nightmares plague her constantly and her harsh gasps are like hooks under his skin – they drag him from unconsciousness whether he wants them to or not. He _can't_ sleep. Not when she paces endlessly for hours, or wakes up with a muffled scream, or choking on a sob. He can't sleep and he can't be with her. He doesn't know how anymore, because she flinches away from him at every turn.

He still gets up from the floor though, flops on his bed and lays there, motionless.

"I'll try, ok Speedy." He says tiredly. He knows she doesn't believe him.

"I'll come check in one hour." And it's a threat. "If you're not sleeping, I swear I'll sedate your ass."

Oliver doesn't even blink. She might as well…

"Goodnight Thea."

Thea sighs.

"Night big brother."

The door closes softly behind her and Oliver is left with his sluggish thoughts for company.

The last week has been spent planning and training incessantly and _waiting_. She has been building god knows what with Palmer and Cisco and whatever it is, it has Barry babbling non-stop about it. Nyssa and Sara are gone, infiltrating the League. Tommy ( _he can still hardly wrap his mind around it_ ) … Oliver believes Felicity when she says Tommy is alive, but believing is one thing – seeing for himself is another; and Oliver won't truly know until he sees his best friend take a breath with his own eyes. Lyla is working with ARGUS, coordinating the agents stateside, and Felicity… Felicity keeps spending her time trying to decrypt the nanites in her head and being frustrated at every failure.

Oliver spends all the time he can with her, as much as she'll let him. Sometimes they talk about nothing in particular. Sometimes the silence stretches endless between them. Sometimes though, when he watches her from afar knowing he can't venture any closer, guilt gnaws at him; he feels ungrateful ( _or not grateful enough_ ) because he both loves being with her, and hates it.

He knows now how his family had felt when he came back from the island: he came back and he was Oliver Queen, but he was not the same they remembered. Felicity on the other hand is not changed, so much as… not familiar. With him, with them all. She acts as if they are strangers because as far as she is concerned, they are. She is colder and sharper too, but perhaps that has nothing to do with any suffering she may have gone through and everything to do with the fact that she still does not trust them – not with her person. She trust them with her plans and dangerous secrets she could be killed for, but she does not give an inch where her heart is concerned; she keeps them at a distance there. And Oliver understands, he truly does. But he misses her _so much_ …

He is grateful for every breath she takes, literally, but he wants the woman he loves back too. He wants _Felicity_ back. _His_ felicity…

He searches for that woman, gently, in her eyes every time he looks at her, and she can tell. It irritates her. She loses patience with him, speaks to him differently and it hurts worse than anything, ( _because he forgets that she doesn't know him, nor does he know that her ever careless words stabs him right into his soft underbelly_ ) because he is not used to her not caring. Oh, they used to fight before. She would tear him a new one whenever his old one was too occupied with housing his head ( _her words, not his_ ), but even then, there had been no denying the respect and affection beneath it; the sheer gravity of the love they had for each other. They had fought lots of times but that had always been always their backdrop, what they came back to. Now that was gone. She didn't see it anymore, couldn't; all Oliver had left was a Felicity that didn't remember what it meant to love him.

He might wish he weren't so vulnerable to it… but he can't. He can't wish away any part of what he feels for her, even if he wanted to. That point of no return had been crossed a long time ago, ever since he'd kissed her on that hospital corridor fully intending on letting her go. There was no point in trying assuage the hurt that came from loving her now.

Which means he'll suffer through the small disappointments and letdowns and keep on a brave face. It also means he'll have to swallow down everything else Felicity does that makes him miss her more, even when she's right there.

And she is. Even though she knows so little about him that she hasn't picked up from a file, even though she remembers nothing of him, of them, together, she still knows how to read him.

 _'_ _You were always so silent, so broody'_ she'd told him once, smoothing her hand down the side of his face, the softness of her inner thigh teasing over his. _'I had to learn to read you even when you so much as twitched an eyebrow.'_

And she does. Even now, she knows him without even knowing. Oliver can tell, because whenever she realizes that she's hurt him, whenever he shows that on his face ( _without meaning to, he's just forgotten what it means to hide from her, sometimes he struggles to remember that now he must_ ) Felicity stops and stares at him, the truth of it sinking into her like a stone falling. He always sees it in her face, how sorry she is, how confused by the way she feels. How much it hurts her that _he_ is hurting.

It's a sick game of mirroring they have been stuck into, and Oliver has no idea how to drag them out of it.

And as he wonders how to get out of it, Oliver realizes that only now does he know the full meaning of what she'd told him, that time: that it's hard to love someone more for the same things that can hurt you. He loves her and loving her is like gathering broken glass to his breast, because she isn't there. But it is for the sake of every shard, no matter now deep it digs in him, that he can't let go.


	6. 6

_6\. A woman like that is not a woman, quite (I have been her kind)_

 _I have gone out, a possessed witch,  
haunting the black air, braver at night;  
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch  
over the plain houses, light by light:  
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.  
_ _ **A woman like that is not a woman, quite.  
I have been her kind.**_

 _Anne Sexton_

Oliver and Thea have the unspoken agreement that, since he can't get close to Felicity without her tensing like a live wire, Thea would have to be the one to keep an eye on her. Which is fine by Thea, since Felicity makes for an interesting subject - despite the fact that, even a week later, seeing Felicity as a brunette is still jarring. The more Thea watches, the more Felicity reminds her of a shark: it's as if she believes that if she stops for one second she'll die or something.

Beneath that manic energy though, Thea recognizes the patters. She can see the tendrils of panic wiring themselves around Felicity's throat and it's a familiar helplessness she feels at the sight of it. They can't help her though; not unless she lets them.

Things get interesting very fast once Felicity gets to spilling Hive secrets. She builds them blueprints of every single floor of HIVE's main compound. Gives them the height of the windows, placement of cameras, patters of laser-detectors, motion detectors, security sweeps rotations - almost every single fucking thing about that place basically ( _and if Thea didn't already know what kind of brain that girl runs on, she would be floored by the details Felicity remembers_ ). Thea is tempted to ask Felicity if she knows what Damien Darhk has for breakfast, but doesn't, because Felicity would probably be able to answer and that is a scary thought.

"You said you didn't even know where this place is." Thea says before she can think better of it. "How can you know all this?"

Felicity's shoulders stiffen just a tiny bit but her tone remains as neutral as before.

"I woke up there. Was kept in an isolated room for a while, but then I could walk around more or less undisturbed. Then I woke up somewhere else."

It's funny how dread feels like an ice cube sliding down your spine sometimes. It feels that way to Thea, even though she really can't look at Ollie's face because he is standing behind her. Does Felicity realize what kind of effect the things that slip out of her mouth have, even when she is trying to feed everyone vagaries? Her answers are filled with prickly nooks and dark places and Thea knows that Ollie's brain is not going to be able to stop from going over each and every one of them. The vaguer Felicity's answers get, the harder he'll obsess. He's barely sleeping anymore, her nightmares haunting his waking hours.

It would all be so much easier if they could just _talk_ to each other, but those two barely even look at each other these days. ( _which is a dichotomy Thea can hardly wrap her brain around, because_ normalcy _for Felicity and her brother had always redefined closeness_ ) It makes her want to cry and bang their heads together at the same time.

"How do you know it wasn't the same place, just a different part of it?" Laurel asks before anyone can say anything. "How do you know it's even the headquarters?"

The look on Felicity's face remains inscrutable.

"There were different guards at my door. Different nurses, different doctors, instructors. No windows anywhere. The building I went to next was a farm on the coast. As for your second question: the main servers are there. There is no mistaking that. Think about it as 'all river lead to the ocean' kind of thing."

Laurel purses her lips and nods, but they can all see that she has more wants to ask. She and Ollie had a huge fight over this, just a few hours ago: she wants to grill Felicity about Tommy. Ollie on the other hand notices the way Felicity goes still and cold every time Tommy's name is mentioned and wants to avoid the topic for a while ( _cue the eye-roll, because 'she's not some shrinking violet, Ollie, this is_ Felicity _; she can take it'. Also known as she surest way to piss Ollie off these days_.). Laurel – and Nyssa too, want Felicity to be sidelined for a while until Palmer figures out what's up with her brain, but Ray _can't_. Ironically, they can even afford to sideline Felicity right now, because she has all the information they need. And Felicity isn't helping at all. She _must_ be aware, on some level at least, that not everyone trusts her and yet, if someone doesn't outright ask her something, she rarely offers to enlighten them.

"…These ramps here are the one usually used to get in and out quickly and they're the ones you'll be using if anything goes wrong; it will take you right into an administrative floor – those have emergency chutes. I can reprogram them once I get access to the network. Oh, and something really important: stay _out_ of…"

" _'_ _Stay out of the elevators'_. Yeah we know." Roy talks over her, nodding. Felicity looks up at him, blinks, and continues as if nothing happened. The girl has perfected the art of rolling with the punches.

 _'_ _Haven't we all'_ a dark whisper reminds Thea from the back of her head. ' _I bet the scars on the inside of our skin match_ '

"These corridors _here_ make for nice little killboxes, so let's avoid those. Based on the response time, how much security is active and whether or not we can distract them, I can calculate a timeframe of action for us, but that's not something to be taken as written in stone." Felicity takes a deep breath, releases it and just like that she stops pretending. She hangs her head back on the headrest and sighs, eyes closed. "Ugh! I'm gonna need to marathon some serious amounts of cat videos after this, I _swear_."

"Why don't we take a breather?" John suggests gently. Felicity shakes her head, eyes blinking open slowly.

She doesn't need a breather, Thea thinks irritably; she needs to knocked out so she can sleep for more than three consecutive hours. She and her brother both, the stubborn idiots!

"No, I'm ok."

"How do you know so much about this stuff anyway?" Roy asks as he leans to take a closer look at the program that was calculating all best possible escape routes from the compound, taking into account a hundred different variables from wind speed to HIVE security.

Felicity shrugs.

"Got bored one night, hacked the mainframe. Besides, I earned myself one of the highest security clearances available while I was there, so… _oh_ …" she jerks, the way she does when she just remembered something important. "Let's not forget that Darhk will assume I know these things. I can't believe that skipped my mind. If course he will, I just… I don't know if this is actually in our favor or against, now that I think about it…"

She's very close to babbling. Very close; her nerves are so palpable they almost make her buzz, and she has to bite her lip to stop herself.

"You couldn't do that before." Nyssa points out with admirable neutrality ( _even though her smoky accent manages to make anything sound vaguely threatening_ ). "Hack HIVE's anything. Not even cameras, if I remember correctly."

Felicity meets Nyssa's sharp black eyes with a carefully impassive face, as if there was nothing more to the observation than its face value.

"Trying to break into HIVE's network is like trying to hack into the internet without wifi, ok. Their system is independent; either you're in or you're out. I was _in_ , because I was in the building and had access to its grid. Within the network, I can do anything. …Which brings me to the _other_ important thing we should talk about."

"The global grid you told us about?" John asks, and Felicity nods.

"It's called OMAC. It's a program that's supposed to have global reach and absolute access, capable of collecting, processing, storing, disseminating and managing information on demand."

John sits a bit straighter on his chair. "On whose demand?"

"Whoever operates it. In this case, Darhk and his creepy friends."

Ray fakes wry surprise. "Darhk has friends?"

"Information on what?" Oliver asks, frown darkening his face. "On who?"

Felicity hesitates a moment, just for the length of one breath, ( _the line of Oliver's shoulders stiffens, Felicity's leg twitches_ ) before she shrugs; and it's a bit helpless, a bit stiff ( _a bit like she's bracing herself for impact_ )

"You. Me. A highschool graduate in Kentucky. Anyone. _Everyone_." She licks her lips nervously. "Yes, it's exactly as bad as it sounds. And before you ask me what kind of information, the answer is everything. At this day and age our whole life is online: money, preferences, inclinations. Everything that makes you, you. Everything they will need to access someone. A careful statistics study can even determine your future choices based on that –OMAC does that too, by the way."

"So basically you built Darhk the means to spy on the whole world?" Laurel recapitulates drily, crossing her arms over her chest. She looks indignant and Thea understands why: this has got to be the worst nightmare ever for a civil rights lawyer. ( _Oliver gives her a pointed look, which slides off Laurel like water off a duck_ )

Felicity's lips thin but she does not flinch from it. "Yeah, it seems I did."

"He would have done this with or without you, Felicity." Thea hears her brother say, in that special, gentle tone of his; the one that makes you think you're the only reason he bothers to talk at all, ever.

Felicity acknowledges him with an almost imperceptible nod.

"Possibly. Probably, yes. But without me, it would have taken him at least another couple of years, if not more." She takes a deep breath and then looks around to the faces of all the people she has been forced to trust. "I might also have a solution to it."

"You know how to take it down, don't you." And it's not even a question; Jon doesn't need to phrase it that way because he see the truth in Felicity's eyes already and so can Thea.

Felicity nods, rubbing her hands on her thighs. ( _Why are her palms sweating?_ )

"When we were developing the first simulation of the OMAC, I noticed these strange irregularities." Felicity starts. "Just random segments of code, that grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Darhk had me interrupt the simulation and start over, because…"

Felicity sighs and for a very short moment as she remembers, a dark sort of satisfaction curls the corner of her lips. Thea recognizes the expression almost immediately: the subtle fulfillment that comes out of one-upping someone sneakily. It's a small accomplishment that stands there, tiny and vicious, whispering a litany of ' _fuck you-s_ ' to those that try to claim you.

"Well, because _he_ thinks in straight lines and _I_ think I circles, so he couldn't see my logic." She tries to sound nonchalant, but if there is one thing that will never change about Felicity, it's the pride she takes in her own work. "I gave him what he wanted, and kept the first simulation for myself, developed it independently."

" _That_ thing?" John asks, nodding his head in the direction of Felicity's corner of the lair, where about twenty high-powered servers were standing around in front of the literal _wall_ of screens that Ray had built for her. They keep showing pieces of code rapidly flying through, like green rain.

"Yeah, that. It's been uploading for almost 38 hours." And there is some worry there beneath her words, maybe the reason why she's so nervous.

"Maybe we should…" Ray tries, but Felicity huffs.

"It's not frozen, Ray."

"But…"

"I already checked the coding. _Three times_. So did you."

"Yeah, about that…"

Felicity presses her lips together, smiles with the last ounce of patience she has left. "Still not a virus, Ray."

"Then what is it? The coding is unlike anything I've ever seen Felicity." Ray Palmer finally says, but he doesn't sound like he's insisting. He sounds hella curious. "Just… what have you put together here?"

Felicity looks at her servers, bites her lip. "I guess we'll have to wait and see."

"And what is it supposed to do?" Oliver quietly asks. Felicity turns to him almost without thought – the moment their eyes meet both go so still it's unbelievable. It makes Thea want to hit them over the head with something.

But then Felicity tells them, and everyone starts paying attention a bit more sharply.

Felicity is fidgeting. She knows she is and knows she shouldn't, but she can't she can't help herself. She has spent a week working on the servers with Ray Palmer, Barry and Cisco, building a unit powerful enough for her program to run on without short-circuiting half the east coast. Still, when push came to shove and all she had to do was press Enter, Felicity had hesitated. A fraction of a second, but she had. Her own technical ability was just about the only thing Felicity could afford to believe in anymore, but there were so many unaccounted-for variables. She might have made a mistake; she could run the program and fry the whole building, or light them up like a beacon for Darhk to find them.

She could get them all killed… ( _The thought had made her heart stutter_.)

It hadn't taken her long to remember that she had made this decision a while ago and hesitating now was just an exercise in futility. She'd pressed Enter a second later; no hesitation, no looking back. ( _there was nothing emptiness in her past anyway_ )

But the longer the program took to upload, the more nervous Felicity became. She follows every broken line of code, biting her nails. She revises her notes, her backup, goes over the code that is uploading searching for errors, for some alteration that could explain the delay. Maybe Palmer is right and the only thing she's managed to create is another destructive virus…

 _This has to work, it has to. Come on, come on, come on…_

"Hey."

At the soft sound, she looks up and sees him standing there, like a tower on legs ( _close; always flirting with the outskirts of her personal space, but never crossing the line_ ), looking down at her in the kind of way that makes Felicity's insides feel like they've disappeared. ( _She already knows that when they come back they'll feel like they'd been filled with lead_ )

"It's going to be fine." He tells her, voice gentle as ever, those blue eyes as soft as velvet. Felicity stares, unblinking. ( _Is it strange that the gentler he is, the harder she cracks? It must be. It certainly feels so._ ) He reaches for her like he doesn't even think about it, warm hand pressing on her shoulder, and Felicity almost jumps out of her skin.

"Breathe." He tells her, fingertips tightening their pressure, his thumb sliding to trace part of her collarbone. Her stomach drops to the floor just as she sucks in a harsh breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

Felicity looks away from him the second she realizes he won't. His hand slips off her then, ( _keeping contact between them until the very tips of his fingers have slipped away_ ) leaving the imprint of its warmth behind, fastidiously clinging, even through her sweater. She resists the urge to scowl, to rub the memory of his touch away, until that sensation subdues.

It's not getting any easier. Not that she expected it to, anyway. For the most part, speaking to the others got less awkward once they stopped trying to trying to peel her back like a banana-skin and find someone else beneath her, but Oliver Queen… the man is _relentless_!

Felicity's not stupid – far from it. All the weirdness that Oliver Queen enacts around her has not escaped her attention. If his eyes on the back of her skull had felt threatening before, that's _nothing_ to how they feel now, because _now_ Felicity is very much aware of _what_ those looks-like-bulletholes-mean.

She doesn't blame him, not really. ( _ok,_ _maybe just a little…_ ) Most of the time it's as if Oliver Queen is not even aware of half the things he does around her. Like the way he says her name, for instance _(the man_ insists _on having an affair with it! Even when he's talking directly to her, he says her name randomly, over and over. She's starting to tell the difference between the things he wants, just by the tone he enunciates those four syllables_ ); or those looks he gives her when he thinks she's not looking, begging her silently to shed her skin and become someone else for him… or the sharp disappointment he tries to blink away, every time she fails to. ( _the circle goes on, from him to her and the hollowness his sad eyes leave her with; a feeling Felicity can control no more than she can control Oliver Queen himself._ That _is what she resents_.)

"Code completed." A semi-mechanical female voice announces, making Felicity jerk forward and ( _mercifully_ ) out of her own thoughts. She knows that voice: it's a default program, she installed it.

 _Ok, ok, ok. Calm down._

"Initiate simulation." Felicity says as she types, noticing how her voice shakes, not caring.

"Simulation One initiating." The voice replies. "Status: pending."

There is a staccato of beeps around the multiple speakers Cisco had installed and Felicity watches as wire after wire, the unfettered data of her program starts to come together in front of her. Her heart thumps against her breastbone, making her feel as if everything in the room just sort of… stops.

"Simulation One initiation completed. Status: all systems online. Set up incomplete. Awaiting input."

Felicity falls against the back of her chair for a second, and just takes it all in as she starts to breathe again, deep.

"Wow…"

"What?" Oliver Queen immediately asks, his tone both sharp and worried and for a moment, all Felicity can do is blink at him.

"Nothing. It's… nothing." She shakes her head, gets back to work. ( _doesn't see his face fall; doesn't want to_ )

"Hello there." Felicity says slowly, looking up from the small screen on her desk to the plethora of them on the wall. Her focus is so absolute that she might as well be alone and that's how Oliver knows that she is not talking to any of them – she's talking to her computer.

A profile of Felicity appears on the screen, with a picture of her, blonde and smiling and all her credentials listed on the side.

"Input received. ' _Hello there._ ' Voice recognition: Felicity Meghan Smoak, creator. User designation: pending. Set-up status: pending."

Felicity laughs breathlessly, eyes shiny with wonder and it's the first real smile Oliver has seen on her since he got her back.

"Ok, ok. Lets finish the set up, shall we." she's breathless, just a little bit, the vibration of an almost laughter shaking her voice at the end of every sentence. It's how Oliver knows her heart is beating in her throat and it must be one of the cruelest things he's ever lived through, that he can't touch her right then.

"Date, time, location – easy breezy… What do you want your name to be? How about Simone? Get it? Simulation One – SimOne. Seems fitting. Do you like it?"

It's not the first time Felicity has talked to her computers. Oliver knows that. Everyone who ever met her knows that. But it is however the first time that her computers talks back.

That is… a bit jarring.

"Input received. Data inconclusive. Define 'name'. Define 'like'."

Felicity's pauses typing. She seems completely unaware that Palmer is staring at her open mouthed, eyes wider than ever; that Barry is literally motionless and Cisco is eyeing the screens like he can't believe his eyes.

"Ugh… a name is a word, or a combination of words by which someone is known. _My_ name is Felicity. To 'like' means to enjoy something. To look favorably on something."

"Elaborating data. Please wait."

Felicity smiles, tilting her head a little with a look on her face that is almost indulgent. "Take your time."

They all wait for a few moments, though nobody seems sure what they're waiting for.

"Elaboration complete. Like: to express positive inclination. Name: A word by which any body or class is designated or known. Simone: derivation of the masculine form 'Simon'. Etymological Origin: Hebrew. Meaning: hearkening; to give heed or attention to what is said. …I like the name SimOne."

And this time Oliver startles too, and it's not just because Palmer dropped his phone and Barry cursed, or even because Cisco yelped he was stung by a bee. He might not be a genius, but even Oliver knows enough of computers to know that it's not usual, _at all_ , to hear one refer to itself in first person and express a preference. Those things don't happen outside movies. Do they?

Roy looks at him. "What's going on?"

Oliver just shakes his head, points at him to be quiet. He doesn't know what's going on, but Felicity does. Her smile is so bright that it causes Oliver to blink in surprise.

"Good. That's… that's great." She laughs, keeps rubbing her hands on her thighs, over her ponytail. Oliver knows enough about her to see the excitement, but beneath it, he sees the apprehension too, and doesn't understand it.

"Ok, SimOne it is. Can you tell me who I am, SimOne?"

"Felicity Meghan Smoak, creator. I am SimOne."

The computer's voice is just as flat and toneless as before, yet for some reason it sounds more assured now. As if the new identity has taken hold. For her part, Felicity _giggles_.

"Yes. _Yes_ you are." And she nods too, as if she can be seen as well as head by this… whatever this is that she has created. "Welcome to the world SimOne. I just uploaded my user designation in your code. And Felicity Smoak is fine; people don't usually add their middle names in conversations. Let's try again: who am I?"

"Input received. Felicity Smoak: creator. User designation: Operation Research and Critical Link Evaluator. …Welcome, Felicity Smoak, Oracle."

When Felicity turns to face the room, she looks from one person to another and fidgets with the end of her sleeve.

"Ok. So… Guys, meet SimOne." She points out with just a touch of awkwardness, enough to remind Oliver that she is actually quite nervous. "She's… a computer, but not really. I mean, she _is_ ; but she's also more."

The right words seem to escape her. But then she makes eye contact with Palmer and her apprehension seems to melt away, because yes, Palmer's eyes look insane and he should have them checked out because nobody's eyes should be able to open that wide, but there is also deep understanding in them as the barest smile opens on his lips.

"Artificial Intelligence." Palmer whispers, as if saying it any louder would break something. "You really did it." Then he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Of course you did it. …How?"

Felicity cocks her head at him."You built a suit that can shrink you into impossible sizes, met people who literally came back from the dead - and you're asking me 'how' in _that_ tone?"

Like it was impossible, _that_ was how Palmer was asking.

"You helped me build that suit." Palmer reminds her and Felicity blinks in surprise.

"I did?"

Palmer's smile widens, something like soft affection in his eyes that makes Oliver uncomfortable… and other things.

"Yeah. It runs on quantum processors _you_ invented."

Felicity leans back in her chair. "Huh." She smiles, satisfaction thin, but there all the same. "Well, building an AI is not as impossible now as it seemed a few years ago. It's just… really difficult. And it also kinda happened by accident, to be honest." Felicity adds, but even before she finishes that sentence, Palmer is shaking his head.

"No, it didn't. You've been working on applying nanotech on Artificial Intelligence studies for years." He tells her softly and Oliver has to bear witness to the way her face slackens in absolute surprise, how she bodily leans forward for just a sliver of more information. ( _He can't deny how that hurts him. That she'll take anything from anyone, except from him._ Him _she can't stand to be around… and that thought has already condensed before Oliver can remind himself that this is not about him at all._ )

"I have?"

The frailty that is burrowed beneath the eagerness of her voice makes the bridge of Oliver's nose tingle and his eyes fog over.

Palmer sounds positively cheerful as he answers. "Yup. I guess some things you just can't forget, even if you don't remember them."

"…I guess."

Oliver can practically hear the shrug in her tone. ( _But there is a little bit of buried hope there too, and it pierces through him_ )

"She really is self aware isn't she?" Cisco asks as he comes to sit close beside her. "And she learns. I mean her input to output ratio is unbelievable!"

Felicity beams. "I know, right."

Oliver feels Thea take a step closer to him, arms crossed over her chest and a vaguely nervous look on her pixie face. "Should we be worried that you look so surprised it worked?"

Felicity turns so fast her ponytail whips around and almost smacks her in the face.

"What? No!" she says quickly. A little too quickly, maybe. After a breath and several raised eyebrows she gives in. "Ok, so I wasn't _100%_ sure that it would actually upload, because we put the server together pretty fast and the last time I tried to bring her online I kind of… caused a major blackout in three states…"

Multiple heads turned to her in sync. It could have been funny in different circumstance.

"That was _you_?"

Felicity cringes a bit at Digg's question and Oliver recognizes that look on her face: how she folds her lips inwards and raises her eyebrows, unconsciously going for the most innocent look she can manage.

Oliver figures out the answer before Felicity even opens her mouth.

"Well… that is a pretty broad transcription of what happened, I mean _technically_ I wasn't even…" she starts and Oliver only barely manages to bite back a smile. Yeah, that was her alright. Digg gives her one of those ' _you should quit while you're ahead_ ' looks she used to be familiar with.

"Ugh, fine. Yes, that was _totally_ me. _But_ I fixed that problem – thanks to Palmer here and his alternate energy sources. So no blackouts this time." And she holds her hands up, as if to appease them. "Or fires. Promise."

Barry gives Oliver a concerned look. ' _Fires_?' he mouths, brows pulling up a form a triangle over his eyes. Oliver just subtly shakes his head. _'Not now Barry.'_

But instead of the fire, Barry asks about something else. "What's Oracle?"

"What OMAC wants to be in his next life." Felicity says around a triumphant smile. And then, more seriously: "SimOne is Oracle. It's the main facet of her programming."

"She called _you_ Oracle." Laurel points out, never missing a beat.

"Because I am Oracle too." And she sounds so proud of herself right then. "It's a cute solution actually: SimOne and I are linked – I am literally part of her coding. Oracle is my user designation and she recognizes no other users but me."

"What does that mean? Are you the only one that can use it?" Laurel asks, careful eyes shining with intuition. That's a connection Palmer, Barry and Cisco had made earlier within two minutes - but their technically inclined brains didn't readily think about what this would mean in the long run. Laurel on the other hand, thinks like a lawyer and she is all about those little details that tend to fuck people over.

Felicity tilts her chin up. " _Her_. She's a self aware entity. And no, I'm not the only one; you could ask her the time or some address, and she'd answer you."

Laurel tilts her head to the side. "But if I ask her to access the FBI database, which I'm assuming she can do…"

Felicity smiles widely. "She can, but she'd probably decline politely. SimOne's system in encrypted. When it comes to commands that violate a system's basic security protocols, she will only respond if they're given by one person."

"Namely you."

"Namely me." Felicity admits calmly. "Security measure, in case I got caught."

"That sounds dangerous." Laurel points out. Felicity responds to the subtle accusation of those words with coldness of her own.

"Because it is."

For the first time in quite a while, Oliver doesn't really know what Felicity means with those words, but he knows that whatever potential for destruction this program has, it would be even more dangerous if it ever fell into the wrong hands. But from the bout of silence followed by Felicity's words and the way Laurel is looking at her, Oliver realizes that both the lawyer in her and the Black Canary think this thing is _already_ in the wrong hands.

"You know, this is really cool and all, but am I the only one getting really strong 'Terminator' vibes here?" Roy points out casually, effectively breaking the tension. "What?!" he protests against the blank looks he receives. "She's basically created a real-life Skynet. Come on, I can't be the only one thinking about this."

"Skynet is a self-aware system that wants to exterminate humans to fulfill the mandate of its original coding… which, I'm assuming, is _not_ the case with your program?" Palmer says as he turns from Troy to Felicity, giving her a searching look. She answers it with one of her _'why are you wasting my brain-time'_ eyebrow-twitches that makes palmer cringe a bit.

Roy gasps theatrically. "You don't remember what Skynet is? I'm hurt Barbie; we marathoner those movies together."

Felicity narrows her eyes at him and Roy's shit-eating grin just widens. That is until Felicity throws the red pen she'd been toying with across the room - with surprising accuracy too, 'cause it hits Roy straight in the forehead. Roy yelps, Thea snorts and Sara outright laughs, leaving Felicity very satisfied with herself. She looks, Oliver thinks, as if she is one second away from poking her tongue out at him. Roy sees it too and purses his lips trying not to laugh. The whole thing makes Oliver shake his head, because they might be making battle plans but the fooling around that comes with that is so close to normal that it's easy to forget a lot of things are different.

"Ok. How does this help us, exactly?" Oliver asks, drawing her attention. She turns to him, for the first time without apprehension tightening her face.

"In all kinds of ways, but specifically, SimOne can shut OMAC down. It's what she was made for. Once SimOne is connected to the main servers, she will trigger a virus that will practically order OMAC to commit suicide – and since HIVE's network now has global extension…"

"Then by definition you can wipe out their digital database in a single stroke." Oliver completes, leaning forward. This is what she had spent months trying to do before she was taken. He remembers the sleepless nights and frustrations; how hard she had worked and how pitiless she had been with herself for failing. The satisfaction he feels at hearing she has now succeeded is entirely for her, for every single time she didn't get it right and how upset she was by it – because she did it. She really can do anything she sets her mind on doing. Oliver knows better than to say that out loud but the sentiment shows on his face nonetheless and Felicity – she smiles at him. Small and faint, more with her eyes than with her lips, but it tugs beneath his ribs almost painfully.

"You know, it's starting to creep me out how you keep saying ' _she_ '." John comments and Felicity purses her lips at him.

"SimOne is a 'she'. And she is going to wipe out their digital _everything_." she adds as she turns her eyes from John to Oliver. "Everything that makes HIVE so dangerous, every bit of technology connected to their servers, everything. It'll crash. From computers to toasters."

Oliver feels his eyebrows rising on his forehead.

"You can do that?"

One corner of her lips lifts up just a tiny bit. "Theoretically, yeah. And – bonus - I have wired in a safety protocol." She turns back to the keyboard and a she types. "It sends a signal for every cell phone within range to emit a high-frequency pulse for mapping an environment, and records a response time."

"Like a sonar." Oliver says under his breath.

"Yup. It'll map up environments and give us locations of HIVE bases around the world, the people in it. The data will pass to SimOne who will form profiles of who these people are, their aliases, everything. None of them will go dark, unless they hide in the Amazon or something. Not even then."

The screens in front of them turn black and then, just like with the sonar of a submarine, they started projecting fast changing images, of people in movement, buildings, streets…

Oliver's eyes widen. That is Seattle he is looking at. He recognizes the outline of the towers that start forming beat by beat.

"Is that streaming live?" Palmer asks and unlike Oliver, his alarm shows in his voice.

"Yeah." Felicity admits, eyes alight with wonder. "Beautiful, isn't it." She says it softly; softly enough that it shouldn't have carried even halfway across the room, but said room is so quiet right then that it did. She doesn't notice the unease creeping on people's faces, too taken by her own creation.

"Beautiful. Unethical … _Dangerous_." Palmer turns to look Felicity in the eye. "You've turned every cell phone in Coast City into a microphone."

"And a high frequency generator." Felicity adds automatically, because it's against her nature to be imprecise about tech. it probably doesn't occur to her right away that Ray is trying to express censure and not just remark on what she's built.

"You're spying on 20 million people, Felicity!" Barry clarifies slowly.

Felicity makes a face. "And you're what? Shocked and disappointed? Hacker is practically my middle name!" She tilts her head then, purses her lips. "Actually, it's…"

"Megan. Yeah, we know." Thea fills in for her.

Sara chuckles at that. "Really? I always thought your middle name was cutie-pie." She winks at Felicity from across the room.

Felicity's answering smile is wide, to compensate for the surprise beneath it, and the flicker of hesitancy she can't help. She leans on the table hands folded beneath her chin. "You like me."

Sara's eyes dance with silent laughter. "I really do."

But when both women meet Laurel Lance's unyielding eye, the humor vanishes because Laurel, as always, is like a dog with a bone. Except neither Sara nor Felicity are very good at being chastised: Sara purses her lips, Felicity takes a deep breath to fuel her patience.

"Oh relax, it's a test run, ok. It's not recording."

"That's not the point." Laurel reiterates, the note of stunned disbelief in her voice quickly hardening into something else. Felicity rolls her eyes.

"Ok, I get it. Invading privacy: very wrong." And Oliver knows he's not imagining the sarcastic tinge beneath the calmness. "But running this program for the first time while we're actually moving against HIVE would be beyond irresponsible."

"And after that? After we've done this, what happens to this… creation of yours?" Laurel presses.

That gives Felicity visible pause.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We don't even have a full plan yet."

But Oliver knows that tone and Laurel recognizes it too. She's stalling.

"Stop playing coy Felicity. You know what I mean. That is too much power for one person. Even for you."

The Felicity Oliver remembers, the one from before she was shot in the head the same man that called himself her father – she would have said something funny to that. She would have made them laugh. ( _Laurel would not have said that to the Felicity he remembers_ ) _This_ Felicity, she fixes a harsh look on Laurel's face, hearing all the words in between the words too.

"I'm not exactly trying to take over the world here, miss Lance. Once I start, you're welcome to have a go at me."

Barry and Palmer exchange a loaded look. Laurel purses her lips. Oliver knows what they're thinking. What they've _been_ doubting ever since they found out that Darhk put something in Felicity's head and they can't be sure who is behind that wheel.

Well – _they_ can't be. Oliver doesn't need to.

"How about we start with discussing tactics before we get ahead of ourselves?" John intervenes before this discussion escalates into dangerous territory. Silently they all give in, but one look into Laurel's eyes lets Oliver know that they haven't dodged the bullet so much as temporarily put the safety back on a loaded gun.

"This is going nowhere." John says in a exhale and Felicity doesn't blame him for his exasperation. "There _are_ no blind spots. Unless someone from the inside helps us in, there is…"

" _I told you_ , Tommy can't give himself away too early." Felicity repeats. She has lost count of how many times she's said ' _that ends with you dead_ ' and ' _no, he can't do that_ ' in the last hour.

"If there are no blind spots then we just make one." Oliver Queen decides as he sits down. He leaves a cup of coffee beside her silently, as if it's usual. She knows that it's going to be exactly as she likes it and the thought grates in all the wrong places.

"How?" Barry Allen asks, as he bites into his burger. ( _is he always eating_?)

"We could set off multiple controlled explosions as a diversion." Felicity suggests, eyes on the blueprints, already knowing where to place the charges for maximum damage.

Palmer blinks at her, bewildered and shocked at the same time. "We can't just blow up the building! There are people in there that…"

"That is HIVE's main facility." Felicity interrupts, before Palmer can start throwing around words like ' _innocent_ ' and ' _nothing to do with this_ '. "What kind of people do you think work in there?"

" _You_ used to, not even five days ago." Laurel points out. "It would have been you we'd be blowing up."

"Yes, and what a waste that would have been." Felicity snaps sharply. If scorn could open wounds, Laurel would be bleeding. ( _Felicity doesn't look around to catch the eyes of those who already are_ ) When she speaks next however, she sounds calmer. "Besides, I put emphasis on 'controlled'. It won't do any substantial damage, but it will look like it. Also – fire; that's a bonus. It tends to make people nervous."

"What?" she asks, looking around, countering the room's silence with the sound of her own voice.

"That… could actually work." Oliver Queen says almost as if in a daze.

"I know that." She clarifies, not without a hint of annoyance. She just said it could work, didn't she?

"How insane is your pyromaniac brain, Barbie?" Harper finally and he's not even joking. "Just - ballpark figure."

Felicity is just about to tell him what he can do with the balls and the figures, but just then Sara Lance starts giggling and wow, the White Canary is scary for sure, but the full force of her smile is like a crashing wave, and it rolls across the table and slams straight into Felicity.

"You're adorable." Sara says around her smile and Felicity feels her eyebrows trailing up, up, up for her hairline.

 _Ook…_

"Blowing things up makes her adorable? _How_?" Barry intercepts, confused and vaguely uneasy, especially since Nyssa seems to understand exactly _how_ and nods. But hey, international assassins right, who knows what they find cute.

"No seriously, every time you're at a dead end, you suggest blowing shit up! That can't be normal." Harper continues, with no small amount of alarm. Felicity decides to move past this very strange interlude by ignoring it entirely.

"Cisco – controlled explosion?"

Cisco Ramon lights up like she just gave him a gift and it makes Felicity want to smile too.

"We have this new hand-grenade design that uses high density oxygen to center an explosion and the shockwaves, so you can pretty much measure the area you want destroyed and…"

She hears Oliver Queen sigh from somewhere on her right.

"How high-precision is this thing?" Felicity enquires, interrupting Cisco gently before he goes off to a tangent, even though she feels a bit hypocritical doing so. But she needs to know, because the only way she can live with this decision is if that precision is pretty fucking high.

"All the tests have had a 89% rate of success. Basically, it's the safest an explosion can get." Cisco answers, fast and absentmindedly; he is already at his table, tinkering with his toys.

"Alright then. This section _here_ is where we should definitely set one off." Felicity says, pointing at the Southwest wing.

"What's in there?" and instead of looking at the map, Oliver Queen looks at her face. It's an annoying habit of his.

"R&D department."

It's a concise answer, but Oliver doesn't miss the way Felicity's face darkens, her voice as flat and cold as the side of a blade. She doesn't linger though, doesn't give anyone else the opportunity to either.

"One floor down from there is the detention wing; they'll be quicker to reroute personnel to securing that Area than any other. That will give us the window we need to infiltrate."

"Detention level?" John Diggle repeats slowly, as if to make sure he heard right. "That is where they keep…"

"The potential metahumans they experiment on, yes." And this time Felicity doesn't look up from the screens. She can't.

"And you want to set off multiple explosions _right next_ to them? There are _children_ in there!" The outrage in Laurel Lance's voice is quite plain.

"I _know_ that." Felicity says in an exhale. She is getting real tired real fast of this game of push and pull Laurel Lance is determined on playing. "I don't understand why you keep repeating what I say."

Laurel's eyes widen in honest outrage. "Are you really telling me you don't see why?"

She _does_ , but she's too tired for the blame game tonight and Laurel Lance's eyes seem sharper than ever.

"I'm telling you to please stop pointing out the obvious." Felicity deadpans. Laurel glares something fierce at her but before she can open her mouth to snap, her sister speaks – and as ever, when Sara talks she gets Laurel's undivided attention.

"What happens after we blow the hole in the wall? What's their procedure?" Sara asks with a steady voice. Her sister gives her an incredulous look but a silent conversation happens between them and Laurel purses her lips, crosses her arms. When the White Canary turns back to Felicity, it's a call to calm down.

"The prisoners will be moved first, probably along with the research. They'll start securing the area immediately, leaving their usual posts - that's our window, and Tommy's signal. He'll clear the server room and block the system for about 3 seconds to give time to Barry to sneak me in without anyone noticing. After I lock myself into the server room, from there I can practically control the whole building and make sure you guys…"

But Felicity doesn't have chance to say anything more, because Oliver Queen gets up so abruptly that his chair scraps across the floor with the force of it and almost falls backwards.

" _No_!"

His voice is loud and deep, almost a growl and the abruptness of his… _everything,_ startles Felicity into silence. Her brain honestly and completely misses his point and she wonders if he's finally lost it.

"What?"

"I said _no_." He turns and his eyes are blue flame, his skin so tightly pulled over his skull that it makes his cheekbones look sharp enough to cut one's hand over. "Absolutely not."

Which explains nothing except for the fact that, of all the caged animals Felicity has seen, Oliver Queen right now must be the wildest. ( _She doesn't realize she's the only one not to understand him – he's speaking_ only _to her and she's the_ only one _not to get his meaning_.)

"What are you… You're not making any sense! ' _No'_ to what? Which part?"

It takes Queen some moments and a couple of deep breaths before he can answer, those huge shoulders rolling like he wants to hit something ( _It's experience that dictates her tensing at the sight of that_ ). Felicity takes in the severe line of his bloodless lips, his white-knuckled fists and the tightly clenched jaw… and she knows right then and there, that this isn't about the plan at all. This is personal and the knowledge hits her from within, slamming against her breastbone making it hard to breathe.

Only then she feels the weight of the tension in the room.

" _You_ are not coming with us." He enunciates every word with the precision Felicity has seen some men wield scalpels, as if there are entire layers of 'obviously' that she has missed, beneath this senseless hurricane of emotions driving him. ( _She doesn't trust her eyes enough to recognize the naked terror that stitches together his every emotion for what it is_ ). His heavy-handedness sparks instant defiance in her, as if she were hardwired for it. Maybe she is. But at the moment, his willful stupidity chafes harder.

"If you think you won't need me out there, you've _clearly_ been missing the point of what I've been telling you for the past _five hours_ …"

He doesn't even wait until she's finished talking – it's how Felicity knows he hasn't listened to a word she's just said.

"That room is rigged to explode if compromised." He grits out as he turns to look at her in the face with dark eyes. The words are a shameless accusation that has no place between them. So what if it is?

"How do you…"

" _You_ told me."

"No I didn't." She is sure of it.

" _Why_ didn't you?" someone in their periphery asks, but the questions registers with neither of them. It's as if the world has shrunk and is compressing them together, the space between them shrinking even though they're not moving a single inch.

"Yes, you did tell me." Queen insists. A small smile curves his lips; a cold humorless thing that catches under her skin like a hook and _tears_ , shocking her into hurting, senselessly. "One of those things you don't remember."

And if there's resentment there, it's the clearest it's ever been since Felicity opened her eyes in their midst. He usually is better at hiding it.

Felicity purses her lips.

"Either way, it doesn't matter. I can override it – I bet I told you that too." And then, with more confidence, she looks around the room and not just at him. "I am not going to blow you guys up. Is that what this is?"

Oliver Queen turns away, the heels of his hands pressing against his eyes as he does so, a mumble that sounds a lot like ' _I can't believe this is happening again_ ' leaving his lips.

( _there's such naked anguish in those words that not even Felicity can ignore it, but she has no context for it and nobody is giving her any_ )

"Explain to Palmer what to do." Queen says then, in a tone that he probably thinks is conciliatory. "He can do whatever…"

"Yeah, I'm not gonna do that." Felicity interrupts impatiently. ( _She will regret later, how that impatience sounded like it was derision_ ) "We don't have the kind of time it would take for me to teach him, or to change SimOne's designation – which I _wouldn't do_ even _if_ I had the time."

" _Felicity_!" And if it were possible, his voice get even deeper, his eyes even darker. "You're not trained to be in the field! And everyone else will be too busy not dying to watch over you!"

He doesn't have to see it – doesn't want to see the insult register in her face, how her lips will part with the injustice of it for a moment before she purses them in anger. It's a dick move and he knows it… but it also happens to be true.

He doesn't want to see it, but as the moment stretches he realizes that her silence is worse. So Oliver turns, already gearing to hold this insipid line of defense, but he stops cold when he finds himself three inches from her face. The shock of her proximity is so sharp that it cuts right through his anger and his fear for just one tiny moment. ( _and she sees his jaw slacked, his lips falling open as his breath leaves him, looking right at her… and glancing at her lips like his eyes are drawn there._

 _Her heart thumps in her throat_ …) But it only lasts a moment. Then he blinks and he's looking into her eyes again.

"I am no League assassin, Queen, but you better believe I am _trained_." Felicity says slowly. Her lips twists in such scorn at the word that he can practically _feel_ the cloud of hurt behind it. "And, correct me if I'm wrong - which I'm not - but _if_ I don't in fact go with you, the chances of survival for you – _all_ of you - drop very close to zero. Which kinda makes this _not_ just your decision, so you might wanna rethink the whole asshole policy you've got going on right now."

"I'm not rethinking anything, the answer is _no_."

There is such finality in his voice, it's like he really believes that what he says does. It would be freaking _hilarious_ and if she weren't so angry she might just slap the skin off his cheek for it, Felicity would tell him how cute it is he believes she'll just roll over and dance to his fiddle. Felicity would do that, if she hadn't spent the last nine months of her life in isolation, with Darhk pulling her strings, manipulating, denying her answers and feeding her lies – expecting his will to be law, same as Oliver Queen was doing. The anger builds and Felicity feeds on it to fight away the fear, until it boils over.

Fuck all these people who bark orders like they have a claim to them; to _her_! ( _It doesn't seem to matter to these men that she is Felicity Smoak and has already claimed herself_.)

"Let me try this again, slower this time. The whole _point_ of this semi-suicidal plan, is to get me into that server room, because _no one_ _else_ can…"

" _And don't you think he knows that!_ " For the first time since Felicity has seen Oliver Queen face to face, he raises his voice at her and she rocks back on her heels from the force of it. "He knows _exactly_ what to expect and where to find you! You think he's not prepared for this? For you stepping in there, just like last time?"

He purposefully steps into her space, dwarfing her with his height, his sheer size. Felicity doesn't give an inch. ( _it will occur to her later that she hadn't felt the smallest flutter of fear, why is that?_ )

"This is a trap." Queen grits out, and he's so close she can feel his breath fanning her face, the blazing anger in his eyes lights them up like ting torches behind his eyeballs. "And not just any trap, but a trap _built for_ _you_. The last time we took that bait, you ended up with a bullet through your skull."

Felicity flinches, the ghost of a memory thumping against the side of her head painfully, reminding her of all the empty spaces she is made of and the threadbare strings that hold them together.

His voice resound in the sudden silence, it's imprint bouncing from surface to surface ( _or maybe just her own head, who knows_ )

"I'm counting on that." Felicity finally admits. "Darhk getting me where he thinks he wants me is _exactly_ where this plan needs to go. It'll mean you guys will also know where he will be, and that's a chance for any of you to put a bullet through his eye socket. Or an arrow, I'm not particular."

Commotion rises around them like the tide, but neither Felicity nor Oliver Queen look away the other; Felicity isn't even sure she can. The world beyond his face seems to blur at the edges and she feels wobbly to her core, as she sees anger drain out of him, leaving him pale and shell-shocked, shaking his head at her as if she's just delivered his death sentence.

"He _will_ take the bait." Felicity insists, making an effort to gentle her voice. Her fingertips brush his forearm though Felicity hadn't even been aware she'd reached for him. ( _she snatches her hand back just as he looks down to where she'd just touched him and then back to her eyes_ ) "He's spent his whole life being the smartest person in the room. He's been right about everything for so long that he doesn't even stop to question himself anymore. He'll just assume that of course he outsmarted me, he _is_ smarter than me."

Queen doesn't say anything to that. It's as if she's taken all words from him.

" _Felicity_!"

In the sudden silence, the call sounds loud and Felicity decides that it's as good a moment as any to step away from Oliver Queen, especially when it becomes clear that he was not likely to. ( _she becomes aware of how close they were standing the moment the distance between them grows_ )

"What?" She asks dully, turning back to the rest of the people in the room. There's a momentary pause when nobody speaks, and Felicity looks to Laurel, because despite the fact that the other woman doesn't seem to like her very much, Felicity trusts her more than the others when it comes to not treating her like she's made of glass. ( _Something which never fails to set Felicity's teeth on edge_ )

Laurel Lance, as usual, does not disappoint. "Do you actually mean to kill him?"

For a second Felicity doesn't understand the question. Shouldn't it be obvious? But there is enough shock in Laurel's voice, that it gives Felicity pause.

"Well, I can say un-alive him, if you have issues with the K-word." she says and it's almost flippant, but beneath it there's just exhaustion.

Laurel's frown deepens. "That's not funny, Felicity."

"I'm not laughing, Laurel." Felicity bites back. But despite the fact that she is utterly unamused, the dark comedy of the moment isn't lost on Felicity at all. "So what? Is this the wrong crowd for any suggestions involving violence?"

( _She isn't even trying to be subtle. One stone-cold look around the room reminds them all that she already knows their darkest secrets; she is very aware she is surrounded by killers_.)

"It's not about violence." Laurel snaps irritably. "We're walking about murder."

Felicity takes in each and every one of their faces, and it hits her: They never meant to kill Darhk did they?

 _When will this end?_

The fact that even after all this strain, that one question remains unanswered and uncertain makes Felicity regret her every choice in the past days. Felicity slumps down on the chair near her computers, midway between the table where they are all sitting and the corner Oliver Queen is standing. She should have followed Tommy's plan. She should have let them be, never offered to help them at all. They didn't even want her help; why had she ever thought they might?

"What the hell did you plan to do with him? His closest men, his most dangerous!" Outrage coils inside her, but she's so tired her words come out mostly as toneless. "Or Malcolm Merlyn for that matter?"

A clear, unanimous answer doesn't come from them and Felicity has the ridiculous urge to laugh. She can't help it. She'd been warned this would happen, hadn't she? Tommy told her and she hadn't listened. Why should she have listened anyway? There were things she knew Tommy would do to end this, but she trusted him about as far as she could throw him. It still grates that he was right.

"Who was right?" Oliver Queen asks. ( _had she said that out loud?_ ) Found his words, has he?

Felicity ignores him.

"We're not killers. That's not what we do." Laurel Lance tells her firmly.

"Good for you." And if her voice were any colder it would freeze her words in her throat. "My question stands. What do you plan to do with them?"

"If I get a shot at him, I will take it." John Diggle say in that sure tone that seems to be his characteristic.

Felicity locks eyes with him. "I hope you're a good shot."

John shrugs. "Lyla's better."

"She should join us."

John Diggle gives her a tiny smile. "She might."

Felicity sees from the corner of her eye as Laurel Lance's face scrunches up. She is expecting it when the other woman speaks.

"John, we talked about this."

Ah, her voice is softer when she's talking to John though isn't it? Not much to doubt in him, Felicity supposes. ( _She was so stupid believing she could ever stay here._ )

"Yes, we talked. We didn't agree." John clarifies. He shares a small look with both the Queen siblings, saying different things to each of them. More secrets Felicity doesn't know. Not only does she not know them, they are secrets in a foreign language.: these people could scream them at her face and she still wouldn't understand them. She knows them about as much as they know her ( _She has no appreciation for that fine irony in that moment. All she wants to do is scream and pass out for a year until someone else fixed this mess._ )

"He killed my brother, Laurel." John says in a carefully controlled tone.

Laurel Lance's upper lip curls up in distaste. "Malcolm Merlyn killed my sister. You think I hate him any less for that because I got her back? He killed the man I loved and 503 people more. I know all their names, I know _all_ their faces. There is nobody here who wants that Merlyn dead more than I do, but…"

"I severely doubt that." Felicity murmurs low. She doesn't mean to be heard but – yup, she is. The Black Canary gives her a firm _look_ before she turns back to John Diggle.

" _But_ I'm not calling for his blood anymore, because you and Oliver both taught me better." Her expression turns sardonic then as she looks between the two men. "But then again, I guess it's easier to keep the higher ground when you're preaching to someone _else_."

John Diggle crosses his arms over his chest, flexes his jaw.

"In case you don't remember, I was right there with you, when you were trying to put a bullet through Merlyn. I haven't changed my stance of that either."

"I remember. Doesn't change the fact that we both were wrong." Laurel leans forward, looking at her friend in the eye and it's the softest Felicity has seen her look outside her interactions with her sister. "Motives don't matter John. Murder is still murder."

"Not disagreeing with you there." John agrees slowly. But where Laurel Lance takes this as a concession, Felicity understands John Diggle's meaning exactly. And it's not what Laurel thinks it is.

"Me either." Felicity says. "But I think you're missing the point, Laurel. This isn't about murder. It's about finding a permanent solution for one hell of a problem. With the kind of people like Darhk and Merlyn, anything less than permanence would be negligent. In their case permanence just happens to mean death."

And maybe it's the way Felicity says those words, almost flippantly, as if it were a matter of course, that provokes that look Laurel Lance gives her: somewhere between deep disappointment and lip-curling distaste.

"You actually believe that."

Well, give the woman a prize! Finally, she's getting it. ( _she'll resent the meanness too, later, when she's calmer. She'll be grateful that she does not in fact, blurt out everything_ )

"With every fiber of my being."

Laurel shakes her head, her eyes almost disbelieving. "Felicity… this isn't you!"

Felicity blinks in surprise. She'd expected harshness, but all she hears in Laurel's voice is distress and hurt. She takes a few moments to process that.

"Laurel… this – _this_ person standing right here: _this_ _is_ me. I don't know who you see when you look at me or who I was before this, but _this_ version of me right now? I'm more interested in calling it like it is." She takes a deep breath, leans forward. "We have a serious problem, I am offering you the best possible solution."

She isn't surprised when Laurel Lance doesn't give a single inch but actually pushes back.

"A solution that involves putting innocent lives at risk and killing people just because it's easier? That's not a solution Felicity. That is your conscience acting up because you _helped_ _create_ this problem. You're scared and it's clouding your judgment, and the choice you're making is not one that _I_ can live with."

Felicity curls her fingers, feels the cut on the palm of her hand that went from the tip of her middle finger to the center of her wrist. It had been bone deep and bled so much she'd ridiculously thought she'd die. ( _hadn't been able to type comfortably for five weeks, after_.) It's just a thin white line on her palm now, but she remembers. And she remembers Darhk's expressionless face when he gave it to. _Behavioral conditioning_ , her brain whispers the words to her like they're a secret, like even in her head he can hear ( _and that was the point, wasn't it_?): to teach her he could hurt her just because. To make her afraid. It had worked like a charm: she had been terrified. It didn't stop her from biting back though. ( _she's so tired of facing her fears. She wants her nightmares dead and burned to ashes; is that so selfish_?)

"You only think that because you don't know better." Felicity says softly, almost to herself. But then she looks up and her eyes find Laurel's immediately. "Let me tell you how it's going to go. We lock him up, he gets out and the dance begins again; people die, again. But what you don't seem to understand is that it doesn't matter how hard you fight back. You have rules; he doesn't. All it takes is one mistake, and when he gets his hands on you… you have no idea what he'll do to you, but _I do_."

Her voice is deep with emotion, but so quiet too ( _almost frail, if the anger beneath it weren't so strong_ ). Her words send dread crawling on the back of Oliver's neck like a millipede.

"You think he will kill you? Oh, you should be so lucky." Her smile is razorblades against his skin; the anguish that lurks in the spaces between her words takes realer form in his head. In there, Felicity is screaming at him. "He will strip away whatever makes you _you_ , piece by piece, until he gets to the core of what you are and beat it into a shape of his choosing. And you won't even know it."

The anger, the gritted teeth have given way to fear now. All her nightmares are there and Oliver doesn't know the name of a single one of them.

"You won't know anything beyond the satisfaction of the kill he will teach you. You'll be warped and ugly; whatever you hated the most – _that_ is what he will make you into. In front of that… I would rather die."

Oliver flinches.

"Better yet: I would rather kill _him_. Before he does that to me or anyone - _anyone_ – else, ever again. If that is not principled enough for you… well, good luck stopping Tommy Merlyn from skewering Darhk and Malcolm like pigs. And when you're fighting us to save their worthless lives, you better ask yourselves if your moral superiority is really worth the suffering of thousands of others."

Her words hang in the room like a bad stench and for long heavy moments nobody can say anything. ( _Her words are going to become worms beneath Oliver skin; they will eat at him. Because she is not so far gone as she describes, but Oliver knows who she got all that from. Who told her all that, from whom she learned._

 _…_ _Is that what happened to Tommy? Oliver can't stop thinking it. It's all he's been thinking about for days and now he doesn't know if he wants to know everything, or if he wants to unhear everything. Or if he just wants to curl up someplace and_ scream _; or gear up and sent fire to whatever and whoever Felicity told him to, unleash the hell that is taking residence in his deepest corners again_.)

"Felicity…" Oliver starts slowly, but when he does manage to look her in the face, he is stopped cold by the look she gives him. They've fought before but this is different.

( _And he's so afraid. She doesn't relent when she knows she's right – it's not in her nature, and that is why he's afraid. Terrified of what he'll have to do to keep her safe. He could barely stand life without her in it; at this point, Oliver has no idea what her hate could do to him._ )

"I know that…" That what? Oliver has no idea how to continue. He thought he did, but the way cold ire distorts her features without changing anything about her expression on her face stops him.

She doesn't want to hear him speak at all.

"No Queen, you don't know. I don't either, thank god, because Darhk needed me whole… more or less. But I know those who do know, and guess what: so do you. You should ask Tommy the next time you see him; he'll tell you all about it."

It's not a casual hurt that she inflicts; no, her brutality is self-aware and as precise as Felicity herself. If she is going to rip them open, she is not going to do it carelessly. And there it is, so predictable, that naked hurt in his face; unpretentious, as if he forgets how to hide from her. Felicity feels the tug of regret constraining her ribs together; feels it in the prickle of her eyes, the tightness of her throat. ( _she knew what she was doing, but wasn't prepared for the consequences on her own person_ ) It all angers her beyond belief, how her own feelings rise against her!

"There's no need to be cruel." Laurel says in a murmur, eyes glassy.

Isn't there? They seemed to Felicity so oblivious. She wanted them to know the evil that would stare them in the face, all the subtle ways it would destroy them… and it's a valid reason, but now Felicity can't quite remember why she thought it was worth it.

Shame burns up her neck, pricks her ears.

"I'm sorry. I didn't…" She could say she didn't mean to be, but it would be a lie, so she doesn't. "I'm sorry." She repeats. For the hurt she caused, she is sorry. But not for the truth. "It doesn't make my words any less true though."

Laurel Lance sighs deeply, passes a hand over her face. "Let's assume we do kill them. What kind of people does that make us?"

Felicity feels the stab of annoyance; it helps her overcome her consternation.

"Practical, realistic people? People who can face the very real possibility that there is no prison cell in the face of this planet that can hold people like Merlyn and Dhark for long."

"He's still your father, Felicity." Oliver Queen reminds her gently.

She wants to hate him for it. ( _She's so tired of this man. Of the whole lot of them_.)

"Oh, is he?" She glances at Thea Queen's face, pale and drawn, her bloodless lips. "Is that what you've been telling your sister too? That Malcolm Merlyn is her father?"

This time she's not afraid to look Oliver Queen in the eye.

"Damien Darhk is many things, to many people. To me… well, he has been my manipulator, my tormentor and apparently, my killer. He has _never_ been my father." She looks from Oliver to Thea without blinking. "As I doubt Malcolm Merlyn has ever been yours, Thea."

And it all Felicity can do to keep her voice down. The effort has her nearly hissing.

"The man you dare call my father, apparently tore my life apart because he didn't like my choices and considered himself above respecting them. Murder is murder, like you say and I agree; but I refuse to feel guilty for wanting Dhark dead or making it happen, just because his sperm somehow found its way into my mother's womb. That particular argument is invalid."

She bites those words out like curses, revulsion contorts her face in a way Oliver has never seen before. He watches Laurel's eyes widen, how the understanding deepens and then shifts: She understands but she just doesn't agree. ( _for the sake of the whole truth, Oliver cant either, but for different reasons_ ) It's not in Laurel's makeup to accept shades of grey easily, nor is it in her history. Where Felicity never gave a thought to preexisting lines and drew her own, Laurel has always lived by rules. Toeing the line of illegality is one thing, but Laurel will never be able to accept or justify murder, not in any shape. Not when she believed with all her heart and soul Felicity is better than that.

"You would never have considered something like this before." Laurel says wearily. Felicity's nostrils flare.

"Maybe not, I don't know. Frankly, I don't care."

"I _do_ care though." Laurel insists, determined to hash out every facet of this arguments and unafraid to do it. "Because if I start thinking that you're a lot more like your father than we thought, then what the hell are we doing following you?"

Oliver takes a step forward. It's a reaction to the kind of anguish that flashes on Felicity's face: instinctive, immediate and absolute.

"Laurel." John warns, arms crossing over his chest, just as Sara puts a hand on Laurel's shoulder.

"Maybe I am." Felicity admits haltingly. Her tone is shaky but her eyes, god, they _blaze_ , and that smile she gives Laurel, all teeth and steel, it's pure aggression. "So be thankful, miss Lance, that I'm on your side."

She steps back and goes to her table to get her tablet and her PC. "I have already given you everything I could. If any of you is capable of coming up with a plan that keeps your survival rate as high as mine does, you're welcome to share it." She says as she arranges her notes. "John, if you could find a bulletproof vest that fits me, I'd appreciate it."

She leaves the room then. As she does, Felicity sees Oliver Queen move to follow, those massive shoulders rigid. She could laugh at how ready he is to pick up right where they left off.

They're not going to.

His footfalls are heavy behind her. She doesn't wait for him to say the first words.

"Can we not, Queen. I'm tired."

He doesn't say anything to that. Doesn't stop following her three paces behind either. They don't get too far before she rounds on him with a scowl, the stubborn bastard. Doesn't he know when to let things go?

"Go on, say it. I dare you."

His face hardens into impassiveness, as if he's steeling himself for something unpleasant. As he should. She is _done_ pussyfooting around him.

"We need your skills, yes." His voice is calmer than she expected, but that changes nothing. "But you don't have to be in the field for that; the danger isn't worth it. I don't care if we don't have time. You're the genius: _make_ time! Find another way."

He says the words with the same steady rhythm of the truth he feels deep in his bones. He had not counted on her looking back at him with the same kind of steadiness though.

"I'm not on your _watch_. Not on your team either. I don't care how you do things around here, I'm not part of it. I'm here to make sure the plan I just _handed_ to you goes off without a hitch and I was willing to be here because, for some godforsaken reason that I have now _thoroughly_ regretted, I didn't want you people to die like flies in the inevitable clash you'd get caught in. _That_ is why I'm here."

"And part of that plan includes you using yourself as bait." Oliver states calmly. It's an unwilling coldness that focuses him; the same feeling that centers him when he's in the middle of a fight. "Even if Darhk does bite, you won't distract him. He'll either use you against us or kill you on the spot – just like he did last time; and I know that because it _already happened_ Felicity!"

She want to scream at him, push him…

"It's not the same circumstan…"

" _I don't care_!" hot and angry, because apparently he is not as calm as he thought he was. "I'm not going to let that happen again!"

Felicity takes a step back, looks at him. Tries to find her calm again. ( _futile, its long gone. She has no idea how she's even still standing_ )

"You sounds so sure of that: that something will happen just because you say so. You're used to that aren't you? People doing what you want." She sounds exhausted, but her eyes on him are unflinching. "You weren't always that way though, were you?"

It's not a question; she's always cut through his lies, even when he was actually _trying_ to fool her, but this is different. They're alone in an empty corridor and as the world slows down, the beat of his heart tells Oliver he should be back away, because her eyes on him are as sharp as the edge of a knife. Everything inside him fights that notion: this is Felicity. She's always been the hidden blade in _his_ hand, not in someone else's. He doesn't fear her sharpness either; he's far too long ago embraced it.

"Well! Were you?" her voice cracks with the first tendril of genuine emotion that works itself into the surface. "Do you remember how it feels, Queen, to have your choices made for you? To feel that helpless?"

She leans into him just a tiny bit. Her words fall on him like bricks, just like she means them to.

"It leaves you with nothing. Nothing you can do, but swim in shit and hope you don't get too much of it in your mouth."

Oliver flinches hard, because she doesn't seem to understand at all (… _and because Felicity feeling like he is her punisher, like he is shoving her into that horrible condition, rips him open_ ). And the pain mixes and fuels his anger, because there they are, her stubbornness setting the limits of her life again.

"Felicity, _please_ …" because for a moment he forgets the woman standing in front of him isn't the same one he needs right now.

( _Is it morbidly stupid on his part, how he forgets that any version of her would have fought him on something like this just has harshly, always? Or is it just natural denial?_ )

"Please what, Queen? _What_?" She snaps, and Oliver closes his eyes against it. ( _she refuses to say his name with the same stubbornness he repeats hers_ ) He forces a breath down his lungs and his lips closed. ' _We don't talk to each other like this_ '

"Do you want the truth?" his voice sounds distant, like he's standing a couple of feet behind himself or speaking though a clog in his throat. It's a trap, this time it's built for him and made by his own hands. He swore he'd do anything though, didn't he? Seems like a small price to pay.

"I've never tried to control you and I have always respected your decisions. I've trusted you with my life, every night, for years; I still do." She blinks at him, her lips thin. She doesn't believe him, and it hurts. ( _her eyes are shiny though with emotion that contradict her expression… and that hurts too, differently_ ) "I know you know what you're doing. But this time it's too much of a risk. You can't play bait to Darhk when he wants you dead more than anyone else. Three minutes of surprise advantage are not worth your life, Felicity… I don't want to lose you again." At this point he's not sure he would even survive it. He definitely knows he wouldn't want to. " _That's_ the truth. So don't ask me to just accept this. I can't. I _won't_."

The way her lungs stop working for longer than a breath makes Felicity so irrationally angry that she could slap him. The unfairness of it all feels like that

"You don't get to do that. You don't get to hold _your_ feelings over me like that. It's not fair and I don't…"

"I'm not…"

" _You are_!" and the worst thing is, he doesn't even _see_ what he's doing! Doesn't seem to understand that he has no right to say things like that to her. ( _the unfairness of having to hear it, see it in his face, feels like drowning: slow and head death_ ) No right to try to tie her in a corner by pulling on emotional strings she could hardly even comprehend, let alone submit to; especially when she has already made her choice perfectly clear.

She throws her words back at him. "You want truth? Fine!"

 _No_! Oliver thinks ( _he's afraid_ ). He is _terrified_ of what is going to come out of her mouth. _Yes_ … ( _yes, always. The one thing that nothing and no one would ever be able to change between them_ : _Truth, even if it slices to the bone._ )

"The only truth I see right now is that I can barely _stand_ being around you, because every time you look at me I feel like I'm just in your way." She hates that her voice breaks, hates how he flinches. "The truth is that you want to protect this person that is not _here_ anymore so much that you don't even stop to think about what you're doing to _me_! And it freaks me out Queen! _You scare me,_ because the _truth_ is that you could probably do whatever you wanted to me. Lock me up, shove me in a hole in the ground somewhere to keep me _safe_!" The word is a scoff out of her lips; never has a single word felt so aggressive or ugly. "It would take you, what, 10 seconds to overpower me? You can, so why shouldn't you, right?"

Derision, right there at the tail of dread, hits him just below his diaphragm and the air thinks out of the room. He shakes his head at her as she rips through him, pitiless.

People have looked at him like he was vermin before, like he was a waste of space or the most terrifying of their nightmares, but _that_ look in Felicity's eyes… The distain, the anguish that drips from her every word - he literally can't _stand_ it. ( _She speaks and her words shove him back. One step, two_ …) He wants to make himself smaller, but his shoulders seem to take up the whole width of the corridor, and its such a burden, being who he is in front of her now. ( _he's loved the way she fit against him, she loved it too… now he wants to be small enough for her to step over_ ) He wants to raise his hands, show her his empty palms, but they're still too large; he has subdued men thrice her size with those bare hands. ( _he's crushed skulls and held her face with those same hands; how did he ever manage to think this moment wouldn't come?_ ) Anxiety lodges itself low in his back, cold and unforgiving _. ('I'd never touch you that way. I'd rather die than hurt you like that.' It sickens him, because it's a lie: a moment ago, he'd been so ready to toe that line… ready and unapologetic, and his stomach rolls with new and very real nausea_.) ' _I'd never hurt you'_. Bullshit and Felicity knows it, reads it in his face. Words are good only for piling up in corners; his actions scream different things to her.

"Felicity… I never meant…"

She takes a step back and it's like seeing a ghost in that tiny shake of her head, the small gesture of her hand meant to stop him.

He freezes all the way down to the breath in his lungs.

"No. No more pleading. It doesn't work that way. I'm not going to let you feel better about any of this by buying into your bullshit excuses." she bites out, exhaustion in every line of her face. "Nobody, no matter what the reason, has the right to pull and push me around, so don't you dare… don't you _dare_ try to do that and call it love. It's sick and selfish. Its _control_ , not love!

"And _I'm sorry_ , Oliver, that you all look and me and don't like what you see but you know what, that is not my fault and I am _done_ apologizing for it."

Oliver shakes his head, reaches to touch her before he can even think about it. "I never asked…"

Felicity flinches away from him, glares.

"No you don't ask, you _demand_ don't you?" her lips are peeled back just a little, he can see her bunny teeth. She might just sink them into him and tear out his jugular.

 _What are we doing?_

"But that girl, the one you could demand things from, the one you had a hold over and who _owed_ you things - she's _dead_. She's gone Queen, and for all I know she's not coming back either. Who I am now - I owe you nothing. And I get to make my own choices, no matter what happens. Darhk has already been introduced to that reality, you should get used to it too."

Felicity stops to take a breath, and it almost chokes her. She makes herself look at him, at what she's just done: look into his eyes made unnaturally blue by the sheen of tears in them, at his mouth is parted in a stopped breath of distraught surprise as she rains blow after blow on him… The stunned devastation she sees in him literally takes her breath away and the most horrible regret she's ever felt crushes her whole being into wanting nothing more than to catch his face between her hand and kiss ' _I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ ' on his lips, all over him, until she eradicates that look from him forever.

The feeling violates her, as foreign as if someone had just planted it out of someone else's body, but it feels as real as her arms and feet feel; she cannot withstand it. She stands there in front of him, having just hurt him beyond comprehension and the reflection of that naked pain in his eyes is what finally convince her stubborn tears to fall. It stops her breath, how cruel she's been.

The only reason the ' _I'm sorry_ ' gets stuck behind her teeth is because they're currently in her lip, staining the inside of her mouth with the taste of the blood and bone she just ripped from him.

 _You are your father daughter, aren't you. Cruel creature._

She is so ashamed she can't control herself enough to stop crying. ( _Hadn't even noticed when she started_ …) Tears just fall and fall and it's as if the two of them are closed in a circle that never ends, mirrors of each other's emotions, ( _the hurt, from one surface reflected on the other and back again_ ) endlessly hurting each other. He reaches for her even then, even after all she's just said to him and Felicity knows - she _knows,_ because it's in his eyes - that he wants to comfort her, but how could she ever let him? How, after what she'd just done to him?

Felicity takes one single step back, shaking her head… this time the distance and how unnatural it feels between them overwhelms her into a crushing loneliness that has never felt more real than that moment.

She turns away. She can't stand to look at him one second more.

When Oliver comes back into the common room of the lair, he looks exhausted. There is no mistaking the redness in his eyes, and it makes Laurel twinge in regret because she knows how hard it must have been for him to come back here, when the easiest thing would have been to just stay away. ( _she's surprise he even comes back, to be honest_ ) She is not going to drop this though. They don't have time to 'drop' things; they talk and close arguments and don't go back. If there is anything this past year has taught them is that.

When, a year ago, in the mazelike corridors of a foreign place Oliver had asked them to trust him even though they had had absolutely no reason at all to do so, they had ended up in dungeon, believing they would die. ( _That is where blind trust led you_.) And yes, maybe Oliver had been faking it, but it sure as hell hadn't felt fake to Laurel. Not to any of them. Felicity right now though – _she_ wasn't faking any of it. And who better to distract them and lead the straight into the mouth of hell, than the one person they all trusted without implication. The one person they all loved. Except where was Felicity Smoak left in there? Had she really been standing there in front of them, talking about bombing a building that was full of children that had been treated like lad rats? Was she the girl spying on 25 million people and suggesting they kill the bad men they fought against because it was easier? Was that really Felicity? Was any trace of their friend left in this girl wearing her face?

Laurel isn't afraid to ask herself these questions. She has lost so many, repeatedly, that loss has numbed her; but after touching bottom, she also knows she is unafraid to face that loss. She would face the possibility of having lost the Felicity who had been a friend to her and she'd do it without flinching, because nobody else seemed to be able to contemplate it without their brain short-circuiting.

God, they all really loved her didn't they? Laurel felt her throat tighten, the sting behind her eyes threatening to take over. She didn't worry thought; she knew she wouldn't cry. Tears weren't such a habitual visitor anymore; she was too proud for them. And as usual, she would be the one to say the ugly shit that lurked in everyone's mind but that they were all too afraid to say. Laurel was fine with that. She always had been. AA 101 for you: always be honest, even when its brutal. Especially then.

"Oliver, I know you don't want to hear this – none of us do - but this could all be one big trap."

She hears him sigh, watches has he straightens to face her ( _personally, Laurel has no idea how he does it, after the chunk Felicity just tore off him. She feels horrible for bringing it up now, but she knows there will never be a good moment for this conversation_ )

"How so?" he asks her, perfunctory almost. He knows how. He just wants her to say it.

 _Fine then._

"You are taking the word of a girl that plans to use children as bait. That is currently violating the privacy of 25 million people, and has built a program that could turn every damn piece of technology in a spynet and has every intention of hunting people down with it. You're taking the word of someone who wants to step into that building and has no qualms will killing almost everyone inside it."

Oliver nods, acknowledging every word Laurel has said.

"Yes. That is whose word I'm taking."

Laurel shakes her head, and her heart hurts for him but she's not about to step into the abyss just because facing a simple truth is too painful. She's done with that before and spiraled so deep sometimes she still feels like she's crawling on her way up. But she hasn't hurt herself that way in a long time and she'd god dammed proud of if too.

"You know, it used to be sweet how, if it was Felicity asking, you'd always do it without question. It was, because you know what, I was the same too - I trusted that woman with my life, every night. I loved her, I would do anything for her but _that_ -" she points at the door from which Felicity just walked out of. " _That_ is not _her_ Ollie. And I don't trust that person, whoever she is, with all our lives. Not when I look at her and barely recognize Felicity."

The words hang in the air, ugly and graceless, making the silence that followed them throb with tension. Oliver catches John's eye, recognizes the irate indignation beneath that frown, the threatening pose of his folded arms, and knows what his friend his asking him even though no words were spoken aloud.

 _'_ _You got this, man?'_

Oliver nods and watches as Digg smoothes over his expression, turning hard eyes ahead. Honestly though, Oliver had expected this; or rather, some form of this. A part of him can't even blame Laurel for it, really. Oliver, Diggle and Roy are used to thinking fast and acting faster; they are used to Felicity's pace and she is used to theirs. They've had years to get used to each other's dynamic; to fall into step with the needs of a situation seamlessly and make their peace with the risks and the hard decisions, because when shit got real, you weren't left with a whole lot of options. Which was probably why Felicity's thinking hadn't set off the kind of alarms in them that it apparently had in everyone else because they had all been in the kind of situations where they'd had to take crazy chances ( _as long as they are not suicidal, a small voice reminded him_. _As long as they don't kill you_ ), make the hard decisions. They had weathered those times together, they trusted each other's instincts, knew each other's impulses and understood them.

But Palmer, he isn't used to this. Barry can keep up, but he doesn't like it. And Laurel, she still has very precise idea about what is and isn't acceptable, despite the mask on her face. ( _and most of the time, is why they need her so badly_ )

Maybe in any other circumstance, Oliver would be angry. He certainly had been in the past few days whenever Palmer hesitated or Laurel and Nyssa had hinted at these doubts, because thinking about Felicity being lost to him any capacity made him snap easier than anything else.

But right now, Oliver doesn't feel much of anything.

"Are you done?" he asks calmly. There's no heat to it, which is why laurel refrains from snapping at him.

"Maybe." She says instead, chin up.

"Ok." he nods. "Now I'm going to say this once and then this argument is going to be closed. My feelings for Felicity aside…"

"There's the lie, Ollie." Laurel reminds him, almost softly. "Your feelings for her will never be _aside_."

And that's when Oliver feels that stirring in his breast, proof that apparently he's not in fact too drained to be angry.

"I knew who Felicity was long before I loved her, Laurel." He says deliberately, enunciating every word with care. "We worked together as a team before we were anything else and I know how she thinks. You two are close, but there are things about Felicity you haven't had a chance to understand yet."

Laurel dismisses that immediately with an irritated toss of her head.

"Oh, spear me! I may not know her like you do, but I do know some things about her and _that_ is not who Felicity _was_ Oliver! She would never put innocent lives at risk. Never suggest murder as a final solution just because it's more convenient or because she was afraid!" And she is raising her voice now, because this has been bothering her for a while. "This person she is now… she's cold-blooded and _ruthless_!"

Oliver smile is bitter, humorless.

"And you think that means she's changed so much that she would be able walk us into a trap and kill us all?" he says it like the very notion is ridiculous.

" _Yes_!"

Loud and angry. _Yes_ , as if it's obvious, and Laurel is amazed nobody else sees it. Oliver looks down to where his hands are, flat against the table's surface.

"I understand why you feel that way. This is a big risk we're taking." Oliver looks up, pins Laurel down with an unyielding stare. "But don't think for a moment that you can tell me who Felicity was and what she was not."

"Oliver…"

He straightens, faces her fully now.

"Felicity is someone who'd hacked into every database known and unknown by the time she was 22. You're talking about a girl who had no problem with me dropping bodies, as long as she figured they deserved to hit the floor; who has never given a fuck about what's legal and what's not as long as she believed it was _right_!" He takes a deep breath, eyes blazing. "Felicity has _always_ been ruthless, Laurel. That doesn't make her any less of a good person, or less capable of compassion, or empathy. There is nothing in the world that could change that. Not even Dhark."


	7. 7

**_x_** _. Ghost memories_

Thea finds him on her way to her room; he's sitting down at the mouth of the hallway that led to Felicity's door. Close enough to know if she came out, but far enough to pace if necessary and not be heard. That was Ollie's favorite spot.

"Psyching yourself up?" Thea asks as she lowers to look at him in the face. She knows just by the way he looks that the answer is no.

"I don't think she'd like me barging in there right now."

( _He doesn't even think she wants to look at him, let alone talk to him, but he just can't stray very far away from her_ )

Thea frowns. That's not how she remembers it. ( _they used to reach for each other almost without thought, even if with just a look, and Thea had noticed right from the beginning, because Ollie – the brother_ she _used to know - he used to act like he did it all on his own_.) Oliver looks at her as if he knows exactly what she's thinking, and his eyes seem to remind her that a lot of things are not as Thea remembers them. She sighs; sits down by him. She wants so badly to ask him what's going on, but she doesn't want to admit to him that she heard their argument. ( _it's ridiculous how much she can hear, but reminding Ollie of that right now seems mean and unnecessary_ ).

It's strange how there are some memories that come back at the most peculiar times. Childhood memories especially. Like ghosts, or shadows, you can't really grasp them; at most you can feel them. They leave behind sensations, create layers of deeply buried sensory memory. They dissolve into you, becoming the mortar that sometimes holds you together, invisibly. But then something happens: you hear a tune, or catch a scent the meaning of which is buried deep into you… and it all comes back. It was always there, you just wake up to it, and suddenly you _remember_. You remember it's not the first time you've heard people argue nor is the first time you've felt like it's breaking you apart. That senseless fear that the world would end when they stepped away from each other.

Thea doesn't remember a lot from her early childhood days; most of what she does remember is being happy. But there are cracks in there too and today, hearing Ollie and Felicity argue like that, Thea woke up to one of them.

She wants to ask him. Ollie would remember better than Thea ever could – he'd been older. What she does remember is so vague it barely means anything. How Queen manor was big, but sometimes not big enough and there were days when raised voice reached her ( _she doesn't remember what her parents used to fight about. Could have been where to spend their vacations; could have been his latest woman on the side. Thea doesn't know_ ). Thea remembers how sometimes Ollie used pick her up and take her out from the back and into the grounds. They used to sit beneath the same oak where they later put his empty grave.

It had been Thea's idea, that. At the time she had thought Ollie liked it there.

"What are you going to do?" She asks him. Ollie looks at her, and he must have been so deep in his own thoughts that for a moment he seems to stare straight thought her, and after that, he looks surprised she's still there.

"Talk to her." But it's shaky at beast. He has no idea how to talk to Felicity, doesn't even know if he should.

"You don't sound so sure." Thea points out.

Oliver huffs, humorless smile twisting his lips. "Because I'm not."

Thea sits down crossed legged in front of him. That tightly coiled ball of anxiety in her belly starts to unravel. Her heart beats just a little bit faster as her stomach play-pretends to drop out of her.

"Do you think she wants to leave?" She asks him, voice low almost as if she's afraid to voice the thought. ( _She is_ )

Her brother's head snaps up, his frown offsetting his worry. "What makes you think that?"

Thea gulps. It hadn't even occurred to him, had it? His eyes get so sad then, soft like velvet and Thea wishes he wouldn't, because looking at people like that has a way of breaking them. He should know better. When he looks at her like that Thea can't help but tell him the truth and the truth will hurt him.

"I dunno. Just… the way she talks sometimes." She shrugs, trying to play for casual, but her eyes are too wide, her face too drawn. "Laurel thinks she's on some kind of revenge spiral, but I think… I think Felicity just wants to finish what she started so she can just get out."

Oliver sighs deeply, looks down, away from her.

"That kinda scares me a little bit." Thea confesses in a whisper. ( _It scared her a lot, but Oliver didn't need to know that_ )

"Scares me too Thea." He shakes his head a little bit. "I don't… I don't know how to do this without her."

Thea huffs.

"Well, that's not true." she says immediately and it was the way she sounds so sure that makes Oliver open his eyes and look at her just as she sighs and sits right next to him, shoulder to shoulder.

"You know, till' a couple of months ago, before we found out Felicity was actually alive, everyone kept looking at you like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or, in your case, for the bodies."

Oliver flinches.

Thea's voice gentles; she wraps her arms around his. "I knew that would never happen."

Oliver shakes his head. Its' nice to hear she'd been so sure. Oliver hadn't. Some of those times, he'd been _so_ close to just… not caring anymore. It scares him now a little bit, just how often he had toed with that line in the past nine months. To this day, he really can't be sure what kept him.

( _That's a lie. He knows exactly what it was._ )

"I used to love watching you two together, you know." Thea tells him then. "I don't think I ever told you that."

Oliver manages a small smile. "You didn't have to."

Thea rolls her eyes. Of course he knows. He probably knows why, too. Thea had tried teasing him a couple of times about the way he just transformed from super-intense scary vigilante, to uber-puppy around one Felicity Smoak, but that had proven pointless when it didn't seem to go through his skull that there was anything to be embarrassed about. He didn't even notice! Sappy idiot, her brother – who would have ever known.

The thought makes her smile softly.

"My favorite thing about the two of you was how you never _handed_ each other anything."

Oliver's frown is tiny and inquisitive, and Thea shrugs, not knowing for a moment how to explain it.

"You know, how she explains things in a way that helps you find the solution yourself, and you do the same for her. I like that." Thea pins him with an amused look. "Felicity does that for everyone, but you didn't use to. You do now though. Well, you try."

Oliver's head hit the wall with a dry thud and a long exhale makes its way out of him. He doesn't deny it, why should he? It's true. When he first came back, it seemed so much easier to either not engage at all, or if he had to, to go all the way and drop himself in people's laps before they could ask any questions. DO whatever they needed him to, be whatever they needed him to be. Neat and tidy, everyone in their own box. Felicity had never allowed that ( _she'd known too much about him to let him get away with it, even on the rare occasions he'd so much as tried. Admittedly, with her he hadn't tried very often_ ). Counting reasons why he loved her had never been Oliver's thing, why bother; but if he'd been the type, the fact that working with her ( _and Digg too_ ) had taught him to meet her halfway, to stop and let people get close to him – that would have been among the first of the list.

( _Her laugh sounds like a bell. She throws the towel at him, he catches it before it hits his face._

 _'_ _I do_ not _keep a list.'_

 _She does. Pro-Con lists. She gives him the stinky eye when he tells her so._ _'_ _I bet you even made one for me.' His a half-hearted tease because he's far more concentrated on the drops of water that fall from her hair to her bare back and trace the arch of her spine. Her face shifts though, just for a second, into an expression that is slightly less amused. His steps in front of her, his fingers brush her knee with a small smile. '_ Tell me' _is in that way his eyes look just a bit wider every time he raises his eyebrows in invitation._

 _'_ _Yours wasn't a list.' She tells him quietly as she squeezes the water out of her hair. 'It was more like a circle.'_ )

"And look what happened: you weren't together anymore, but you didn't give up, did you?" And now Thea looks at him steady in the eye, her eyes purposeful and her voice stronger. "What I'm trying to say, Ollie, is that you've been doing this without her for months. It was a hundred times harder, sure, and at this point you - and me too really - we both have all kinds of abandonment issues and are fucked in the head beyond recognition, but you _still held on_ didn't you?" Thea's voice started to get just a tiny bit shakier, thick with tears. "And she did too. You taught each other to fight, even without each other. And look where you are now: you're together again, right? Despite all the impossible chances."

And she sounds so hopeful, like she's just begging him to believe what she believes. Oliver nods.

Thea wipes at her face messily, and gives him a grin full of defiance. "Actually, it's pretty freaking cool that even while having _zero_ idea of who you are, she still ends back right to you. That's really something."

Oliver closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. He remembers the things she said to him, just a few hours ago. The look on her face when she talked to him. How he is making her feel so horrible… and the heaviness comes back, inescapable.

"She hates me Thea." The admission is like poking at an already painful wound. But his sister only snorts at him.

"Don't be an idiot." She says dismissively. "I don't know what Felicity feels – hell, most of the time I think even _Felicity_ doesn't know what she feels - but whatever it is, it sure isn't hate Ollie. Come on big brother, you can't be that blind."

Oliver blinks at her slowly, not understanding at all, and Thea sighs. Yeah, she doesn't know how Felicity used to do it, because Ollie really is the worst kind of emotionally stunted sometimes. ( _It softens her heart immediately when she remembers, within the space of the same breath, that he's not; he's just prone to immediately believing the worst of himself_.)

"I think she's just scared, Ollie." Thea adds gently. She'd suspected if before, but after what Felicity had said about Darhk, it was a certainty now.

Ollie frowns immediately, and Thea knows that the first think he just thought is that Felicity is scared of him. 'Ugh!' was invented for these moments.

"Scared of what?"

Thea sighs. "Take your pick. There really isn't a shortage of things to be scared of right now."

That answer isn't really an answer, Thea knows it. Oliver might not though, but that is for the better, because how could she explain? How could Thea ever find words for what it was to walk in the dark and follow a pull blindly… and then end up hurt, over and over again? She couldn't. The abysmal feeling that left you with isn't something you can tell; you just feel it.

"I'll see you later, big brother."

She leaves him there, but before she has reached the stairs to go to her own room, she hears him move, and his footfalls getting fainter as he move in the opposite direction. He's not going to knock on her door. Thea knows that not from listening to the direction of her bother leaving, but because she knows Oliver. And after what Felicity said to him, he won't be the one to barge in on her. And Felicity… Felicity is as stubborn now as she always was, and twice as scared.

As she closes the door of her room behind herself and rests her forehead against it, Thea wishes that the mantra of ' _calm down everything will be alright_ ', didn't feel like such a hollow promise, for once in her life. More than anything, she wishes she were the kind of person that would say that, or even believe it. But she had lost that part of her somewhere between Slade and the dark waters of magic hot tub - which was probably why she needed Ollie and Felicity to figure things out, ( _because they couldn't fight a war against people as scary as Darhk if they were divided, but also_ -) because if even those two couldn't, then the rest of them were fucked for real.


	8. 8

_7\. My blood beats out your name to me (your name, your name)_

 _There is a strong wall about me to protect me:_  
 _It is built of the words you have said to me._

 _There are swords about me to keep me safe:  
_ _They are the kisses of your lips._

 _All the wishes of my mind know your name,  
_ _And the white desires of my heart  
_ _They are acquainted with you._

 _The cry of my body for completeness,  
_ _That is a cry to you._

 _My blood beats out your name to me,  
_ _unceasing, pitiless  
_ _Your name, your name._

 _Mary Caroyn Davies_

Felicity talks a lot. She is open and honest, one of the most genuine people Oliver has ever met. And yet for all that, in all the years he's known her, Felicity has never given away a part of herself accidentally. It used to impress him years back, how Felicity could babble on about anything, coming off as utterly charming and genuine, while at the same time leaving people with no substantial knowledge about her unless she wanted them to. ( _Oliver can't be counted on this list – his minimal knowledge about her was intentional distance used to be his prerogative: close, but not quite enough; skimming over people just enough to keep them with him, while keeping himself safe_.)

He learned him time, to want to know her. ( _despite himself too, something for which he still feels the sting of shame, every once in a while_ ) Colors are Felicity; liveliness, optimism and brutal honesty, they suit her. Summer together taught him all the sounds of her laughter and the taste of her every smile… and that silence was true to her too, as much as everything else. That she had sad days, and anxious days and days when she could sit in a corner and stare into space and all of a sudden, he'd find himself shut out. It used to make him so restless at first, wondering if she was having second thoughts or doubting him, them together. He taught himself to get over that. ( _A sigh as she comes close, steps between his knees, cupping his face between soft, tiny hands. Her lips on his forehead speak to him of gentle affection, quell the rising anxiety. 'Oliver, look at me.' Her eyes hold the weight of a vow when she says it. 'I love you. I chose this and I regret none of it.'_

 _The words, the promise behind them, still have a way of making his insides do strange things._

 _'_ _But?' It's a croak, it makes her face go soft and her eyes shiny._

 _'…_ _but you're not the only thing on my mind all the time.' A smile that tries to lighten the mood. 'Maybe 49% of the time? Bonus if you're shirtless.'_

 _He can't help the embarrassment then; a self-deprecating little smile in the face of a truth he's always known: that despite the island and all that came after, the selfish, self-involved little shit that got on the Gambit had not been scorched out of him as thoroughly as he'd hoped. Bits and pieces persist, because while there are things that change, apparently there are others that simply_ can't _._ )

Felicity has a strange relationships with her own secrets. She isn't like him; she doesn't drag them around like heavy suitcases, shoving their weight behind her every thought and action. No, she buries them deep; keeps them hidden, keeps them safe[1]. The parts of her where she hurts, the parts that give way to old wounds – _that_ is where Felicity's truest silences come alive. There are spaces in her wide and deep where a rock falling would echo for days; times when her silence are so heavy, they could fill cathedrals. She is Felicity Smoak, and starts to fully know what that means when she tells him about days when she'd been so lonely that she had fought the silence with the sound of her own voice ( _or the TV always on in another room, or music on, even when she was asleep_ )

' _You didn't know me then_ ' she'd told him that night, when confessions were easier made in the dark. ' _It was before_.'

Before Oliver Queen stepped into her office with a flimsy lie. She has a before and after, same as Oliver does. For him it's the Gambit, the island, the fall. For her, it's her father leaving, college, Cooper… Oliver Queen. ( _This idea - of him being her disaster, the one thing to upheave her life the way the island uprooted his - had always made him flinch, but he'd accepted it because Felicity saw it differently. …Now he_ can't stop _thinking about it_ ) Maybe now she'll add her own death to the fractures of her life - and that too is something that makes him want to hang his head between his hands and question everything.

That kind of bottomless look in Felicity's eyes is the one Oliver recognizes the next time he sees her face. Her expression is inscrutable, eyes shuttered, like a curtain has been drawn over them. That marrow-deep weariness the lines of her face tell about creates a bubble around her that might as well be a wall for how it keeps people away. ( _it's the same one that keeps anyone from going within three feet of Oliver too, but he doesn't notice that_ ) To everyone else, she just looks uncharacteristically solemn, but Oliver knows what's beneath that.

She's retreated inside herself, to where it's quiet and where nothing can reach her. (… _and Oliver shoved her there, didn't he? Her words keep coming back at him, like ghosts in the dark, haunting him: You scare me._ ) The familiar expression strikes a chord in him that keeps echoing all day, vibrating just an inch beneath in skin with awareness ( _of her every breath_ ).

A couple of times Oliver feels her eyes on his back; the weight of them making him pause and hunch his shoulders ( _trying look smaller and bracing for impact at the same time_ ). Only once do their eyes meet and in that moment, her pursed lips loosen, a tiny crinkle between her brows appearing just before she looks away. It feels as if she's thinking hard about something and then changes her mind, trepidation snapping at her heels - showing at the corner of her eyes and downward-angled mouth. Oliver understands the reticence: he has no idea what to say to her either, or even how… but he lingers in her periphery anyway. ( _strangely feeling like she doesn't want him away just as much as he needs to be close… though that could be wishful thinking or, at this point, just stupid hoping_ ). One time ( _or a dozen_ ) he wonders if he does it just so that she can yell at him some more. Honestly, it would do him good if she just walked straight up to him and started to unload everything she had ever held back. He wants it. He wouldn't be surprised to find out there are more parts of him Felicity has always hated.

It wouldn't surprise him. It doesn't.

It doesn't surprise him all the way to the training dummy, which he starts attacking viciously, trying to release all the mayhem that was going on inside him. He doesn't want to spar with anyone, doesn't trust himself to be safe with another person. He feels fucking toxic as he goes at it, and his thoughts consume him - even as his muscles burn, he can't quiet them. Not right away.

His brain, like a broken recorder, plays back their argument to him over and over again. What Felicity said about Darhk pounds his brain. What Darhk would do if they ever got caught; what he probably has already don't to Tommy. Oliver hands a hit so hard on center mass that the dummy shakes to its root. He can't even think about that. He feels himself shaking every time he does, yet he can't _stop_ , because Felicity and Tommy are an ' _us_ ' apparently, and it's not even that they want to tear HIVE and the League apart, as the sense that there is no room with them for him, in that 'us' that they built without him.

Oliver has no earthly idea how to feel about that – or even the fact that his brain goes there. He comes up blank and he wonders again, if he is even capable of truly believing that Tommy draws breath, if he doesn't see his best friend's face in front of him.

 _'_ _Darhk needed me whole… more or less_.'

 _What did he do to you? What happened?_

The hits keep raining down, the repercussion of every one traveling over his arms and straining his shoulders, his legs. She won't answer that. She doesn't want to, but it's more than just lack of trust.

What right does he have to her trust anyway? He never did.

Maybe this is what their relationships should have been from the beginning. It would have been fairer for sure.

But it doesn't matter that this is for the best. For _her_ best. He _still_ wants her. Yes, he is exactly _that_ selfish: he knows he's no good for her and he still wants her and could hardly care about anything else.

 _You just can't let anyone go, can you?_

Not even when she all but shoves her unhappiness in his face.

Fucking perfect irony right there, even though Oliver can't remember her words without wanting to hang his head and cry like a child ( _or alternatively scream his throat raw, because a small part of him that will never completely die, mocks his pain – your own fault for ever allowing her close enough to hurt you in the first place_ ). It probably went a long way to tell about his feelings that he couldn't even manage to be angry about them.

…Her jailor, her oppressor.

It's ridiculous.

And it's the truth! So true that it makes Oliver feels encumbering, like he's taking too much space.

How had he not noticed what he was doing to her? But then again, it fit his patterns to a tee, doesn't it?

 _'_ _It's sick and it's selfish.'_

He's always been selfish. Always.

He's possessive of the people he loves, because he's an asshole. Always has been. Underneath all the suffering that has shaped him, all the choices he has made to be a better man, he's still, persistently, a huge throbbing dick[2], isn't he? His most comfortable default is and always has been egoism. All his choices, all his decisions, even his _lies_ , they have always been to protect _himself_ , no matter how he disguised them. From beginning of his life to right this moment, that is the one thing that never changed nor is it likely to change. Tommy – _his_ best friend and nobody else's; Laurel – _his_ girlfriend, _his_ protected; he'd wanted _everything_ from her and wanted to give only an inch in return, selfishly holding on to her while he fucked around with everyone else for cheap, shallow pleasure.

 _You unimaginable dick_.

Shado, Sara.

 _How many times are you going to get the people you love killed before you learn you don't know_ how _to love?_

His eyes burn but he doesn't need them to keep hitting. Slade knew the moment he saw him, he used to scoff at it.

Felicity and Digg…

 _Felicity…_

He looks back, at making Felicity his EA, making Digg his driver, and he could scream or laugh or both, because he's so fucking predictable it's a real wonder how he's managed to live this long in the first place. Because _of course_ their lives had to spin around his; around _his_ mission, _his_ cause. Oliver thinks back at how he'd felt when they didn't anymore - when Felicity got a different job and Digg got his own life, and he could laugh at himself, or punch his old self in the face. Whichever works. He'd even had a hard time unlearning that it wasn't _his_ mission anymore, last year. Because of course everyone was his to protect in whatever way _he_ saw fit, he was Oliver fucking Queen. Of course!

 _You poisonous asshole. What right do you even have to anyone?_

But he's always starved for _everything_ hasn't he: affection, commitment, attention, _love_ \- as if it was his right to it, knowing he wouldn't ever able to give back as good as he demanded. Fucking patter for him at this point.

An obsessive compulsive liar who demands honesty. What. A. Joke!

 _You really should have died on that island._

" _Oliver_!"

Oliver jerks back, eyes locking with Digg's. He tries to ease his breathing down as he leans on the dummy's upper arm and scrambles for the pieces of himself scattered everywhere.

"What?"

The question comes out like a bark, but John knows it's not with _him_ Oliver is irritated right now. In fact, true to form, Oliver snaps his mouth shut, jaw so tight a muscle in it ticks before he hangs his head, takes a deep breath and repeats the question in a more normal tone.

"You ok man?" John asks. It's rhetorical: he knows Oliver is most definitely not ok. More than a question it's an invitation.

"I'm fine."

John rolls his eyes. "Yeah, right. You've been going at it for more than an hour. What part of ' _take it easy on the dummy cause we can't afford a replacement right now_ ' didn't you understand?"

Oliver blinks at him, like he has no idea what he's talking about. Maybe he doesn't: John wouldn't put it past Oliver not to have heard him at all as he strode purposefully towards the training area earlier.

John takes a deep breath, throws Oliver a bottle of water and plants himself on the closest chair.

"Sit down."

And it's not an invitation.

"I said I'm fine." Oliver snaps.

"I heard you the first time." John reiterates calmly. "Now sit the fuck down."

Oliver looks at him blankly for long moments before his shoulder slump and he drags his feet all the way to the chair, plopping himself in it as if his muscles can hardly hold him up.

Seeing him like this makes John's heart hurt.

"What's eating at you?" Because there is more to this than the argument about Felicity's involvement in their mission. John knows it. Everything got really quiet after Oliver followed Felicity out of the room the night before, but the door shut behind them and to be honest, nobody had wanted to hear their argument.

Oliver doesn't answer right away. Instead, his shoulders curve in more in, as if to protect himself. It seems obvious now that something happened between them in that corridor and it's fucking both of them up. It's not surprising. Those two redefine intimacy in a way that John has very rarely seen before, but they never were afraid to fight each other either. It's not the first time they've hurt each other's feelings. The problem is that, as things stand right now, they don't seem to be able to come back together.

"I fucked up." Oliver finally admits. "I don't know how to make it right. I don't even know if I should."

John sighs. He'd expected something like this. He'd hoped it was only because Oliver was feeling like shit about whatever went on between him and Felicity, but the fact that there was a side-dish of self-hatred didn't exactly surprise him either.

"Oliver… look, I know that some heavy stuff wend down last night, but you have to know that there is no world or universe in which Felicity would ever let us go out there, knowing we'd get killed without her. Hell, if she had her memories, she probably would have fought you harder."

Maybe not as harshly… but still, she would never have let that one go. And she's not going to either. John knows that down to his bones, because that girl might be frayed at every edge[3] right now, but she is still Felicity. John looks at her and recognizes his friend and he can see that despite her better judgment and ingrained suspicion, she cares about them all, because some things can't change and thank god for that, because Felicity has one of the biggest, warmest hearts John has ever come across, plus a spine of steel and sharp teeth to defend it with. Even with no steady ground on her feet and zero safety net, she didn't allow anyone to rob her of herself… and John has rarely been more proud to be called her friend.

"She thinks I'm trying to control her." Oliver tells him, eyes locked on the bottles cap. "That I'm manipulating her when I tell her that tell her that I don't want her to get hurt because I care about her."

John gulps, and then nods.

"That… makes sense." He says slowly. The look Oliver gives him is half hurt, half confusion. "I bet Darhk used the fact that she is his daughter to manipulate her in god knows what ways. It makes sense that she doesn't trust emotional attachments."

He watches Oliver nod mechanically and sighs, because even if John were standing a mile away from Oliver right now, he would still be able to see how flimsy that gesture is. He doesn't fault Oliver for it though; it's harder to be objective when you're in love and in pieces.

"That's probably why she compared me to him, right?" Oliver says then, voice rough and shaky, and John winces. He fidgets in his seat because that's… yeah, he can see how that's fucked Oliver in the head a hundred different ways. It's definitely something that warrants an hour-long session of one-on-one with a wooden dummy – though Oliver probably meant it to be more punishing than releasing.

Still…

"Come on man, you can't take that personally. She has no idea where you're coming from right now."

"Right. She doesn't remember, so she takes everything at face-value." The words fall flat. It sounds like Oliver is trying to make himself believe them, half-finished bottle of water loosely held between his fingers. And then his face darkens. "Or maybe she just never told me. Maybe she always felt just as stifled as she does now, but didn't want to hurt my feelings."

John reels back, frown deepening. "Are you sure we're talking about the same girl here, man?"

Oliver looks up sharply at that but Digg doesn't budge.

"Ok, look. God knows you and your ego can suck all the air out of a room occasionally, but the Felicity _I_ remember - she never stood for you crowding and pushing her around from day one." John chuckles, because it's actually pretty funny. "You know the beauty of that is that it's not even an exaggeration. Day one of her in the Foundry: you tried to threaten her into doing something she didn't want to do, and the blonde five-foot-nothing IT girl drops you like a stone. One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen in my life."

Nevermind that it had also been terrifying to watch that girl just walk away from someone known as a serial killer, just when Oliver thought he had a pretty good handle at getting her to do what he wanted. It had left Digg stuck between being threatened and in awe of her sheer nerve - and he knows for a fact Oliver hadn't been far behind him there. That's Felicity for you though: just when you think you got her, she'll floor you. And thank god for that, otherwise she probably wouldn't be here.

John watches a small smile make its way on Oliver's face at the memory and he breathes a little easier. It's good his friend seeing past the guilt and into what actually happened. More often than not, Oliver gets stuck hating himself and that warps even things he knows to be true.

"She's always told you the way she felt, been pretty vocal about it as I remember." John adds.

"Yeah, she has." Oliver murmurs softly.

John leans forward, settling his elbows on his knees and linking his fingers together.

"I get that she said some things that were… that were heavy. And yeah, she probably would have chosen a less blunt way to tell you how she felt, if she still… if she still remembered who you are and why you do the things you do, but Oliver – you can bet your life that Felicity would have told you _exactly_ the same thing anyways." At Oliver's wince, John takes a breath and edits. "In less hurtful ways maybe, but still. Though I'm not sure about that either. It's not the first time you've torn through each other."

Oliver nods absently, eyes unfocused as he stares ahead.

"Just don't read too much into it like you usually do." John warns and when Oliver's eyes meet his, it's pretty clear to the both of them what John means.

"How do I apologize for something like that?" Oliver wonders aloud.

John huffs. "Well, it usually starts with 'I'm sorry', but I get how you'd be stranger to those words."

Oliver gives him one of his 'firm' looks and John smiles. That's more like it.

"I don't think she even wants to _look_ at me right now." Oliver murmurs, fingers tightening around the plastic of the bottle and bending it.

"Yeah? Cause it seemed to me like she's been trying to gather her nerve to come talk to you all day."

Oliver's eyes snap to him, face awakening in interest in such an immediate way that would have been almost funny in any other situation.

"Did she say anything…" He asks tentatively but John is already shaking his head.

"Yeah, we're not going there man; I'm not gonna play referee to the two of you." John says as she gets up. "Get out of your head and set things straight for both your sakes, cause we have patrol tonight and you're not fit to be in the field like this."

Around midnight Oliver starts gearing up along with Digg, Thea, Sara and Roy. They're going out strictly on recon, to check their perimeter ( _something Felicity is already doing through her program. She rolls her eyes at them when they tell her that there are some things the human eye can catch that computers can't, but doesn't say anything_ ). Oliver leaves the suit behind and so do the others, opting for black from head to toe. They can't afford to draw the eye here. He stays behind on purpose as their base empties, waiting for that moment of privacy; stops in front of her desk on his way out, touching the smooth surface of it with the tips of his fingers. It feels like his whole body is balancing in that small touch.

"Nyssa and Lyla will stay behind with you." He tells her softly. Felicity doesn't look up. ( _gulps visibly instead, eyes glued to the monitors_.)

"To keep watch?"

Oliver realizes how much he misses the her wry teasing, the shameless, in your face 'I-know-better' looks, when he hears her voice come flat at him, sounding nothing but tired. It makes his ribcage feel too small for his insides.

"Felicity…"

She acknowledges him with a hum. Oliver waits for her to look at him. _Just once, look up. Look up!_ She doesn't. On the contrary, her fingers start flying on the keyboard. Licking his lips doesn't help with the way his mouth has gone as dry as the Tibetan desert. He leans in, his weight at the tips of his fingers touching her desk.

"I'm sorry."

Its then that Felicity looks at him, surprise flickering in her face, intent sharpening her eyes.

"For what? Maybe you'd like to narrow that down a bit."

For a moment, a small moment like the flutter of a butterfly's wings at the back of his neck, he has the urge to smile. When it comes to apologies, Felicity likes them specific.

"For making you feel unsafe." That comes out first, because ever since the moment she said it, the thought has been banging around his skull like a grenade with it pin out. "I wanted you to change your mind and got carried away …" He stops then presses on. Can't lie now, not even by omission. "I _still_ want you to change your mind, but I could never… I would never make you do anything you didn't want to do, Felicity. I'm not going to."

His stomach hollows out at the surprise his words are met with: how her tightly-pressed lips part and her eyes grow rounder and softer as weariness shivers loose. It makes his skin crawl as he watches it. She really didn't expect that did she? It feels fucking awful to know that.

Felicity gulps, her pink tongue coming out to lick dry lips before she gives him a shallow nod.

Oliver hadn't planned to say anything more, but he can't _not_ say this now either. The thought is corrosive, if he doesn't say it will eat him alive.

"You don't owe me anything, Felicity." the words land between them slowly; too slowly for the weight they carry. "You _don't_ and I'm so sorry."

She manages to hold his eyes for a few moments before she looks away, a long breath coming out of her in a broken exhale. The sheen in her eyes might be emotion, it might be the screens' reflection.

She shakes her head minutely.

"Doesn't feel that way."

The words barely reach him, so quiet is that murmur between her teeth. Oliver's not even sure he was _meant_ to hear it, but he _does_ and it roots him on the spot.

But before he can say anything more Sara pokes her head in. "We're ready."

Her voice isn't that loud, but against the heavy stillness between him and Felicity, it sounds like she yells and it makes them both jolt visibly. Oliver and Sara share a blink before she turns back leaving them alone again.

"You should go. They're waiting for you." Felicity says then, already typing away. Oliver waits for her to say something else, to look at him. When she doesn't, he nods and steps back, joins the others. Digg gives him a questioning look and Oliver just nods, his face set as he walks to his bike, rolling his shoulders and loosening his muscles, trying to make the right pieces fit ( _they didn't, and trying was like setting bones_ ).

It's long moments after they've hit the road that the com link in his ears buzzes with life making Oliver flinch. He's never liked wearing those things but the absence of her on the other end taught him to hate them.

"Arrow, can you hear me?"

Oliver tenses so suddenly that the bike almost loses balance. He has to take a moment before answering, and he actually hears her taking a breath to call his name again.

"I can hear you."

"Oh. Ok, good. Boy do you sound weird with that voice modulator. Right, moving on." Her voice is clear as a bell in his ear and without the benefit of looking at her in the face, it sounds like nothing has changed. "All lines are open, guys. The signal of the coms is safe and bounced from a satellite so as long as you've got your piece with you, I can't lose you even at the end of the world."

Somewhere on the other side of the city, and in his ear at the same time, Digg chuckles.

"Well, that's always good to know."

"Yes it is. Oracle is connected to all controls so if you ask her to pass you to whoever you want to talk to, she will. I'm behind the wheel and I listen to everything, so no dirty jokes – or alternately, if you must then make them good.

Roy chuckles. "This is getting interesting."

"Keep in mind all the walls I can run you into Scarecrow."

The familiar nickname makes a swarm of nerves fly up from his gut. Oliver clamps down on it with iron will and irritation – at himself. Roy, Thea, Digg and Sara watched 'The wizard of Oz' a couple of nights ago and Felicity had been there too, hanging in the back with Nyssa, Lyla and Laurel, half listening to one conversation, half following the movie… until she finally gave up pretence and went to sit closer to the TV, occasionally stealing popcorns from Roy's bag. The fact that she chose the same nickname for him this time as she had last time doesn't really mean anything.

It doesn't!

"I think we can take you on, right Speedy?"

Thea's laughter flutters in Oliver's ear.

"I say you need to watch you left!"

Roy yelps, the sound of screeching tires makes its way to Oliver's ear. He waits until he can hear the kid take a breath before he snaps.

"Alright that's enough. Keep focus, or head back to base."

His tone is harsh and the distorted voice only adds to it so it's no surprise silence meets him at the other end. Oliver doesn't really _want_ to interrupt their fun – they're probably riding the same rush he feels in his own veins at the sound of Felicity's voice guiding them again, but this isn't a game, and they can't afford to lose concentration now.

"Arrow, the 13TH is jammed and there are police cruises stopping traffic so maybe you should…"

Oliver doesn't even wait until she's done. "Where, Felicity?"

"The next one, left."

He takes the turn without the smallest hesitation.

Oliver doesn't find Felicity at her work station when he gets back, which is unusual, but then when he goes to his room and listens to the silence, it tells him nothing. No pacing, no sounds of her shifting in her sleep or any kind of restlessness and it's… it gives him the kind of relief that he didn't think he could feel anymore.

He lays in his bed that night actually _wanting_ to sleep. He's tired; he's been tired for quite some time. He's going to keep being tired until he has Darhk six feet under and Merlyn locked up in Lian Yu, but that is a progression best not thought of if he wants to get some rest tonight. And he does. Oliver just wishes there was some other way to rest without having to be unconscious for it. Life is a shrieking mess right now, but inside his own head it's no better and between the fear of what he'll see in his head once he closes his eyes and what will happen outside of it if he does, sleeping has turned into its own form of dreaded torture.

But instead of focusing on that, on how even as he lays down he is hyperaware of everything ( _the temperature of the room, the fan's rotating, the light streaming from the window, the sound of the clock by his bedside and his unrelenting thoughts_ …) including how his heartbeat picks up in strange patters, Oliver focuses on the fact that in the next room Felicity is sleeping – because it's easier to focus on that than anything else. She is laying down on her bed, probably on her stomach with one hand curled into a fist close to her mouth. She's kicked off the blanket by now, and is probably fighting the pillow too. It makes Oliver mouth curl up at the edges; he's never shared a bed with a messier sleeper. He remembers the first time they actually _slept_ together. The fact that her shifting around in bed hadn't waked him up was proof of how exhausted he'd really been. But the real wonder had been waking up in the morning staring at the pale lilac ceiling of her room, with a sleeping Felicity by his side balled up in a fetal position, face shoved into his shoulder and knees against his sore ribs, with both arms wrapped around his (- _that he couldn't feel or move because it was all pins and needles, which had been a shame, because his hand had been high on her thigh and he would have liked moving it_ ).

The memory loosens his anxiety just a bit, and Oliver closes his eyes and tries imagining her there with him. Face sunken in the pillow and lips just a little pit pouty and a little bit parted, a riot of stubborn curls around her head, dark now and just as lovely ( _he's never told her, but he loves her curls. Loves how they seem to reflect a sort of untamed freedom; careless happiness_ ). He refrains from reaching out; just lays there, counting in his head to the rhythm of a heart he used to know and trying to match his own breathing to that count, until sleep pulls him under into a half-oblivion, where his fantasy takes a will of its own. Her eyes open, fantastically blue and familiar, and her smile is soft as she crawls on top of him, linking fingers and touching lips. ' _Hey_.'

In this strange dream that isn't quite a dream, because he isn't quite sleeping, Oliver smiles back. ' _Hey_.'

Oliver wakes with a shiver and a gasp and it goes a long way to show how used he is to waking like this that he doesn't immediately jump off the bed. He rubs his face with both hands and isn't even surprised anymore when his palms wipe away the wet trails of tears.

All in all, _not_ the most restful sleep he's had but a look at his bedside clock tells him it's four o'clock in the morning, which means he just got four consecutive hours, so it's not that bad.

Oliver drags himself out of bed with a sigh and shuffles into the bathroom, resigned to a cold shower and coffee. ( _he listens the whole time for any kind of noise from her room but the only thing he hears is the night's sounds bouncing off their walls. He manages a relieved sigh that could almost be a smile: she's never slept through the night before_ ) As he walks down the hall, Oliver goes through the shifts in his head: knowing the hour, its Sara's turn, which means that either Nyssa or Laurel will be with her ( _probably both_ ) something for which Oliver is glad because he knows neither will disturb his silence.

What he finds in the tiny kitchen of their base literally freezes him in the threshold.

Felicity is there, almost-dry hair piled messily on her head in a bun that's gone a bit askew, hunched over the coffeemaker as if breathing down its neck is going to make it work faster. The back of her right foot rubs her calf as she waits. She's wearing those thick, fuzzy socks that Thea bought her; they're a shade of orange that is ridiculously bright and the red polka-dots on them seem to glow in the dark. ( _Between the black sweatpants, grey hoodie and her pale face, that's about the only dash of color she has on_.) Oliver looks and for a moment he panics because he doesn't know what to do.

He's not sure what alerts her, he barely even breathed since he saw her, but Felicity snaps her head around, wide eyed and startled. They both freeze like two deer in headlights.

"Hi." Oliver says, almost reflectively. "I didn't mean to startle you."

She shakes her head and takes a deep breath, tries for an awkward shrug.

"It's fine. I'm usually better at knowing if there's someone in the room with me, but…"

( _He knows. She's always aware now, with hair-trigger reflexes and Oliver tries really very hard not to think about why all the time_ )

"The coffee machine is not cooperating?" He says instead and smiles when Felicity groans and relaxes enough to lean against the counter.

"It hates me." Felicity sighs, head lolling to the side.

Oliver tries not to smile too wide as he takes a couple of deliberate steps into the room, instead of hovering at the periphery.

"Probably because it's unaware you could take it apart and rebuild it." He says casually.

"I _know,_ right! One figures that would earn me some respect. And quicker coffee."

He hides his smile as he turns to the fridge to pull the orange juice out. It's not what he came here for but it doesn't matter. He doesn't want to intrude on her silence anymore than he wanted anyone to intrude on his.

"You emm… want some? _Coffee_ , I mean. Not…"

Oliver can't help the slow blink as his brain catches up with the implications of the question.

"Yeah. Thank you."

Felicity reaches for another cup and sets it beside hers just as the machine beeps. It's nice to watch the way she bobs on the balls of her feet, her simple excitement over something as regular as a fresh pot of coffee. Feels normal. She doesn't ask him how he likes it, just hands him the cup and Oliver doesn't tell her that when _she_ is the one brewing the pot, he actually adds a bit of sugar to it because Felicity likes her coffee strong enough to stand up and dance.

He takes the cup carefully, avoiding her fingers.

"I wanted to talk to you earlier, but I sort of… chickened out."

It's the familiar tone of her voice, low and gentle, almost tentative, that catches him by surprise, making him lean against the counter a bit more. She's sitting on one of the high stools at the table, looking right at him and it feels like there's infinite distance between them, but at the same time, in this moment they are closer to one another than they've been since Felicity woke up here.

She holds his eyes, doesn't try make the weight of her own guilt easier.

"I'm sorry too, you know. For hurting your feelings like I did. …I know I've been hard on you. A lot harder than you deserve." She looks down then, fingers gripping that porcelain cup like a lifeline. "I have no idea what this must be like for you. Like some kind of nightmare you can't wake up from, right?"

The smile on her face is pained, a grimace of understanding. Oliver doesn't need to ask her how she came by that approximation. ( _He already knows how, and it's of no comfort_ )

"I haven't been making it easier either." And again, she looks up and right into his eyes, because she is brave and she means it, doesn't she? "I am sorry for that."

Oliver is shaking his head before she's even stopped talking.

"Don't be. It's not your responsibility to make things easier for me. You were right about that too." There is no hesitation in those words nor the way he speaks them, because there are very few things he believes in more.

She squirms a bit in her seat though. "That was… harsh."

The wince on her face speaks of regret, and Oliver could laugh right then because they both know she's not taking anything back. The only thing she regrets is hurting him, not the exasperated truths she dropped like bombs between them.

"Maybe. But it was the truth." And he will stand firm on that. "I think I needed to hear it, actually."

The look in Felicity's eyes changes, settles somehow. She nods imperceptibly. It feels as if they're laying down arms.

"Still feels like I should say sorry."

There's silence for a bit, one that feels… not uncomfortable exactly, but not right either; like a clothes that used to fit but now are two sizes too small. Expectant – that is a good word for the silence between them, because neither knows what the right thing to do or say is. Oliver takes his queues from her ( _his every feeling controlled by the look on her face_ _ **[4]**_ ) so when Felicity turns contemplative eyes on him, he almost holds his breath.

"You don't have to stand at the other side of the room from me if you don't want to, you know." She tells him softly, her smile smaller, but real this time. "When I said you scared me, that's not what… I never meant like, _physically_ hurt me. I don't think that."

Oliver sighs. "I'd rather I didn't scare you at all, to be honest."

Her lips curl up at the edges into one of her lopsided smiles. "Baby steps, Queen."

Oliver crosses the space between them slowly, trying not to look at her like he's evaluating if she might bolt or not.

"Did you manage to get some sleep?" he asks as he sits by the corner of the table; close enough to be _close_ , but far enough not to disturb her space. Felicity shrugs but even if that was meant as a nonchalant gesture, it's overshadowed by the tiny shake of her head.

"My head is not a big fan of sleep right now. Which is a shame, cause I love sleeping and missing out on it is _not_ working well for my complexion."

Oliver waits until she takes a generous gulp of her coffee before offering.

"Wanna talk about it?"

Felicity pins him with a look over the rim of her cup and all levity is gone. They look at each other and it's as if the truth of her insomnia and nightmares is standing right there in the room with them. She probably doesn't like it. Oliver didn't use to like it either. It used to make him feel horribly exposed.

"I didn't mean to me, specifically." Oliver hurries to add, when he realizes the oversight. "John is… you could talk to him."

"Yes, I probably could."

 _But I'm probably not going to._

The words are so clear in her tone that she doesn't even need to say them out loud. It was almost like a joke honestly, a really bad one. Oliver smiles a little, at how _not_ funny some things are when they come to bite you in the ass.

"A friend of mine told me some time ago that if we don't talk about the bad things that happened, they become triggers."

It feels rude to throw her own words in her face like that, but he has no better advice to give than the one she gave him. ( _They should both go give John a hug one of these days, for all the good he's done them, even when it was through each other_.)

"Have you found that to be true?" Felicity asks instead. She just won't give anything if she doesn't get something back, will she? Oliver doesn't mind, not really. It's not about power play to him: there is nothing she could take that he wouldn't happily _give_ , but the fact that Felicity chooses to treat their first normal conversation like it's a battlefield, tells more about her secrets than she is willing to.

"Yes, I have."

"Sounds like good advice." Felicity says slowly, but doesn't add anything more that makes her words into a flippant dismissal.

"Felicity… I know that it feels impossible right now, but letting someone in will make it easier." And he knows exactly why, so he doesn't flinch when the heavy weight of her eyes comes back on him. "It's not good to be alone with your thoughts a lot." Especially when all your thoughts want is to devour you.

"And should I start with you?"

There's skepticism behind that questions ( _poignant derision in the way one corner of her lips curl upwards_ ) and it's not just directed at Oliver. That contempt is only the first layer of a complex puzzle… and it's matched only by the helplessness Oliver feels at the face of it.

"You should start somewhere." He tells her. "It's your choice."

"Just take it on faith, right?" The words are muttered, as if she is saying them to herself. But then her eyes focus on him, razor sharp, just like her question. "Would you do it?"

Oliver has to smile, even though it's bitter, because he knows what she's asking. ' _Would you open up to someone like that, without knowing if it's safe or if it's just like any other jump in the dark and you'll break your skull when you land_?' Oliver has never had enough tolerance in him to appreciate irony; it always seemed like it was life's way of laughing at you while you were busy bleeding from her wounds. This time it's no different, because the answer to Felicity's question is so obvious its almost painful.

He gives it with the outmost honesty.

"No." His dull eyes look back into her surprised ones, a tired smile at the corner of his mouth. "But then again, you were always braver than I was."

For a moment, just a flicker, she looks at him like he just broke her heart, before she turns her eyes to her half-finished coffee. Oliver is left reeling, dangling between taking her hand, comforting her _somehow_ , and saying 'I'm sorry' for whatever it was that put that devastated look on her face.

"You know, while I was there, I knew the whole time something was wrong. I mean, I didn't _know_ , but I could feel it. They…" Her voice breaks and she shakes her head. She's not going to tell him about that tonight. Maybe not ever. "But then this man comes along telling me he's my father and how he's so glad that he finally found me and _hands me_ my life in a file, just like that. So I'm stuck thinking how on paper everything sounds perfect, so why does none of it makes sense? And instead of doing something about it, I waited."

Oliver listens without moving, almost without breathing. He's afraid that if he so much as flinches, she'll remember who she's talking to and once she does, he'll lose her again.

"It's not that hard to subdue people, not really. We do half of our liars work for them without even realizing it, usually. Everybody wants something, all you need is the _right_ kind of lie and they'll just want to believe it." Her upper lip curls in distain. She scoffs, but from the look on her face it almost seems to cause her pain. "I was so stupid. It makes me _sick_ , how stupid I was."

What turns Oliver's insides is the amount of contempt he hears in her voice, even as rage burns up a storm in her eyes.

"I played right into his hands. Daddy's little girl. Such flaming _bullshit_ , and I ate it up with a spoon. I didn't even know him, but it didn't matter… I guess our fears don't leave us just because we forget about them, huh."

It's not really a question, even though she is looking right at him. Oliver's chest squeezes like a vice at the sight of her wiping away angrily at a tear that had managed to escape.

"That's not true Felicity and you _know_ it's not. Do you think my sister was stupid for being manipulated by Malcolm Merlyn?"

She looks up at him sharply and Oliver watches as swift understanding resounds in her like a struck bell.

"No."

"No, she wasn't. And neither were you. You were alone and vulnerable and he used that against you. That makes you as human and blameless as everyone else who was every abused by people who were supposed to protect them. It doesn't make you stupid."

Felicity gives him a knowing look. "Making the same mistake twice would though."

It's then that it hits him, what she's really saying. Oliver blinks slowly and settles back into his seat, a strange sort of numbness spreading through him.

"I learned my lesson; if there's one thing HIVE taught me, it's that. The last time I trusted in something just because I was afraid of the alternative, I ended up doing horrible things." But even as she says that, Felicity leans into him. Oliver doesn't know if she is aware of what she is doing or not; of how low her voice goes, how he has to lean in to listen and it's as if she's pulling at him ( _the citrusy scent of her shampoo is like a blast to the senses_ ). "But then you look at me like _that_ , and I…" She sighs and Oliver can feel her warm breath on his face. If he kissed her right now, she would taste of coffee. "Every single thing I know tells me that I shouldn't trust you, _any_ of you… and everything else I am, _really_ wants to."

She straightens in her seat and looks at him with all the sadness in the world. "I'm all I've got and I can't even trust in that."

Oliver lets her search his face as he tries to breathe through aching hope and bitter pain tearing at each other right in the middle of his chest.

"You're not all you've got. You're not alone, Felicity. I know it must feel that way, but you're not. And you _can_ trust me. If you give me a chance I'll prove it to you."

Her smile is humorless. "Scary thought, that."

He feels the skin of her hand under his fingertips. The ghost of a touch.

"I don't want to scare you."

"You don't." which comes so readily from her lips it manages to feel true, even though she's looking at him with bottomless sadness. Around a sigh that sounds almost like surrender, she tells him. "You _exhaust_ me."

Oliver doesn't know what to say to that. He tells himself that maybe this would be easier if he stopped feeling every word that comes out of her mouth, but he has no idea how to do that. The weight in her eyes, all the unspoken things, they make him feel so small all of a sudden. "I don't mean to."

Her tiny smile I no less sad than her eyes, but the understanding that warms her eyes softens her expression. "I know."

Oliver's next breath almost gets stuck in his throat. He fidgets in his seat, clenches and unclenches his fingers around the cooling coffee-cup.

"What you said the other day, about feeling helpless; about…" He can't even say the words to her face. The hurt of them throbs inside him, they get stuck behind his mouth and his anger. When he looks back at her, she sitting there and looks about as bare and exposed as he feels. "You were right, I know exactly how that feels and I never… I _never_ meant to make you feel that way and I'm _so sorry_ I ever did."

Her hand reaching out, landing on his forearm, fingers curling into him with intentional strength, stop the words in his throat.

"Maybe we should just admit that we were both harsh, and forgive each other, and stop apologizing. Ok?"

Oliver blinks up to the ceiling several times until he's sure he can see clearly, before he looks back at her. He's not sure he can manage to keep his voice steady right now, so all he feels safe to give is a firm nod. ( _Her hand on the bare skin of his forearm scorches_ )

"Ok then." She says with a nod and a tremulous smile. She takes her hand back and wraps it around her coffee cup, flexing her fingers around it.

And in that moment, it does feel like it's ok. Approaching some kind of normal, rather. Ok feels way off. But for the first time it doesn't feel impossible and that is good too.

"What do you want?"

The question takes Felicity by surprise. He looks at her like he's prepared for anything, everything. She could probably tell him right now, that she wants that whole building razed to the ground and everyone in it dead, and that look in his eyes, it practically whispers to her _'I can make that happen'_. It's a strange kind of thrill, contemplating that and knowing it to be true. Felicity knows what power is. She has felt it at her fingertips: whole cities, hundreds of thousands of lives depending on her at the push of a button. But _this_ , this willing surrender of an individual person, it's a different kind of power. It's one beating heart alive in her hands. Freely given.

This is not power… it's trust. And Felicity is responsible for what everything she demands does to him.

It makes her head feel light for a moment.

She closes her eyes, sighs. "I just want this to end."

Oliver nods. "I know. But believe me, unless you make a choice you can live with, this will never end, whether we put Darhk in the ground or not. So _what_ do you _want_?"

"Do I want my father dead, you mean?" she straightens the truth of it out like it's written on a piece of paper. Stares it long and hard in the face. "I want him gone, that's for certain. Would it be easier to just kill him? A definite yes on that front. Safer too, because honestly I don't think there's any kind of place that can hold him and even if there is, as long as he's alive, he's a threat."

Felicity purses her lips at that, shakes her head.

"You know what the kick is though?" She looks at him and there is the kind of sadness in her eyes you could drown in. "That's exactly what he thinks about people like you." Her smile is bitter, hateful. An expression he has never before seen on her face. It chills him.

"I hate him. I don't think I've ever hated anyone the way I hate him… but I think just like him. So what does that mean, really?"

"Felicity…"

When she looks back at him, her eyes are dry and so, so sad.

"I think what that means is that Laurel Lance is right, and you shouldn't be asking me that question at all." Her little chuckle is dry. She pushes wayward curls off her face carelessly. "You decide what to do with them. You guys aren't the heroes for nothing, right?"

His eyebrows come together in this strange, mixed expression that is something between confusion and disbelief.

"And what do you think you are?"

Felicity takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, fingers curling around the now cold coffee. She doesn't look at him when she answers.

"I don't know… I feel like a fragment. Not here not there either." She scoffs, dismissive. "I mean, I can face it: unless it runs on a microchip, I have on idea what to do with it."

"Is that what he told you?"

Her eyes snap to him; the sharpness in them belittles her careless shrug. "Just… a personal opinion."

"Wanna know my opinion?" It's almost a challenge the way Oliver says it. Felicity offer him the floor with a casual wave of her hand.

"I think you're one of the strongest people I have ever met, definitely the smartest. Even when you were all alone, even when you didn't even know another way was possible, you just _made_ it happen. You're nobody's _fragment_." The mere notion seems ridiculous. "You're Felicity Smoak. Look at you: you're standing here, choosing to fight."

With her every word, her practiced defense chipped away until she is left looking at him in with a kind of resenting vulnerability that Oliver knows well. ( _When she was at the end of her rope, Felicity started developing contrasting multitudes_ )

"I don't know how! I don't know what the right way to do this is." She looks up, shakes her head, almost exasperated. "I want to be on one side but I keep fighting with the weapons of the other and I just _don't know_!"

Oliver reaches out, sets one hand on her shoulder, down her arm.

"You don't have to figure it out alone. You don't have to be afraid of being like him either, you're not." Calm. Sure. So certain in it that Felicity has to bite her lip to keep it from trembling. "You won't _ever_ be like him. And it doesn't matter with what weapons you fight back."

"No?"

"No, it doesn't. Declare your own terms, build your own field. If there's one thing I learned about Darhk is that he'll always win if you play his game."

Felicity huffs, as if it's obvious.

"So let's not. We'll turn tables… And then we'll use _every_ trick we know. _All_ of them. It doesn't matter if you play dirty, nobody cares Felicity. Just win."

"You sound like Tommy." She tells him softly and Oliver has to take a deep breath to absorb that blow.

"Well, sometimes Tommy and I get things right."

She gives him a wan smile. "Yeah, sometimes. So that's a yes on blowing up the building?"

"Parts of the building." Oliver specifies. "And yeah, that's a yes. It's a good plan, its going to work."

"And how are you feeling about the other parts of the plan.

He closes his eyes, tries very hard not to clench his jaw. "I… just promise me you'll think about it. Please."

She waits until he opens his eyes to answer.

"I'll think about it."

Oliver sighs. He already knows she won't change her mind. She won't because it's the best plan she's built so far and if nothing else, Felicity is always efficient. She trusts them to do their job and trusts _herself_ most of all, to keep herself alive. That at least, can comfort him a little: Felicity will always look out for herself because she's not the kind to walk into sacrifice needlessly. It's one of the most precious things she's tried to teach him, after al. He has to gather enough nerve to trust her in that. He has to.

* * *

[1]' Is it hidden? Is it safe?' Gandalf, from Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring – the movie. ( _binge watched the trilogy two weekends in a row, something was bound to stick_ )

[2] post/95799595378/mystarsandmyocean-replied-to-your Meta out of which the inspiration for this section, and that particular phrase came.

[3] Halsey, 'You're frayed at every edge but you're a masterpiece'

[4] Quote from 'Scandal'; Fitz says it to Olivia.


	9. 9

_What do you want from me? Really._

She wants to ask him that but doesn't because it would sound like a screech of pain and Felicity can't handle that. She doesn't but she wants to, because she hasn't spoken a single word in almost one hour and yet he didn't go away. Even silent, his presence is heavy to bear ( _maybe more so because he is silent_ ). He's sitting right next to her and she has her hands balled so tightly that they're shaking just a little bit, as if she wants to have at him with every ounce of strength she possesses. ( _or maybe just to keep from touching him because she has no idea what to do next and its terrifying_ )

But then Oliver Queen looks up, his eyes rimmed red with sleeplessness and pain, and so, _so_ blue, almost unnatural. He looks at her and that look passes straight through her, as painful as a bullet. She has nothing left to put up anymore. She's so tired.

( _She asks him. The fallout is as bad as she thought it would be_.)

"I don't… I don't want anything _from_ you, Felicity." He admits with painful earnestness, so much that it hurts to look back into those wide eyes.

But beneath that there is so much more, some of it he lets her see now: the hurt, the anger… the frustration that at his own helplessness that is the bases for everything he is feeling.

"I want to help you, but I don't know how." He admits with a self-disparaging smile that is more a wince than anything else. "I don't know what to do to make this better."

She nods, but her eyes are sightless – they stare right through him. And more than anything in that moment, Oliver wants to reach out to her when two quiet tears slip down her face. Felicity doesn't even seem to notice.

"What if there is no making this better. What then?" the way she asks this is almost a challenge ( _or it would be, if she didn't look like her ability to breathe depended on the answer_ ) For a moment, Oliver doesn't understand. And when he does, he is stunned; honestly rendered speechless by the implications. ( _he understands finally, how far exactly her dread went, and why, and how similar in truth their feelings were_ )

"That's not… Felicity, this was never about your memories. That wasn't what… I don't want to _fix_ you, there is _nothing_ _wrong with you_!" He's surprised by the vehemence of the words, but doesn't take them back. He means them. "And what you said, me looking at you, that's not… it's not about replacing you with anything. That's just…"

He hesitates for a moment, not knowing how far to take this, not knowing if it's right to tell her, before he decides for the truth. That was the unspoken agreement. Between them, wasn't it. 'You can trust me' means only truth.

"I just miss you."

She shakes her head. "I'm not the same person you miss. I don't…"

"You don't know that." Oliver says calmly. He does know however: she is still Felicity, just more than she used to be, because more happened to her and she absorbed that and her heart changed. But he's not about to tell her who she is or is not. In order to believe it, she'll have to get there on her own. "Memories are important but they're not _all_ you are. You're _so_ much more than that."

 _I love you for more than the things we went through together._

But those are words she wouldn't like hearing right now. He does though. And she is. So much that Oliver doesn't really have the right words to tell her and he hates it, because now that she needs him, Oliver can't do what she did for him over and over again. She's taken his hand and walked him off the edge so many times, but Oliver doesn't know how she knew, how she did it, how to do the same. All he can do is try.

"And it doesn't matter what you remember, or if you never do. That's not the point, it never was. I just…" He takes a deep breath, exhales it slowly. "I just want you to be ok, Felicity."

A strangled sound leaves her, like a laugh but thick and wet with tears. Her eyes shine with tears and dry humor when she looks at him

"It's funny isn't it? How 'ok' seems so bland, but fall far enough and it starts to sound like a pretty freaking good place to be."

He makes that breathy noise that passes for a chuckle these days - a bit helpless, a bit shy - and for a few moments, the quiet between them feels like silence and nothing more than that. No words piling up behind their teeth. Felicity keeps looking at him, careful not to stare. He knows she is – that's why he keeps his eyes away _._ ( _and it loosens her ribcage a bit, knowing that; makes her breathing a easier_ )

"Are _you_ ok, Oliver?" Felicity asks him, not without trepidation.

The soft tilt of her tone doesn't at all warrant the way he startles at them. Oliver looks at her for a long beat with wide, almost frantic eyes. When he answers, his voice low and so soft it makes her think of words like 'kindness' and 'gentleness'.

"I don't think you really want to know that."

This time Felicity doesn't take it personally ( _how could she? He looks so painfully uncertain and she is very well aware she is to blame for that_ ). So she leans a little forward on both elbows and gives him a small smile.

"You shouldn't presume to tell me what I want or don't want to know. Didn't we just talk about this?" she reminds him gently. His uncertainty gets even more pronounced but he nods and looks away, shuffling a bit in his seat in an awkward way that is completely at odds with his usual grace, and that makes Felicity want to smile for some reason.

"I think I'm better now." Oliver murmurs.

This time she does smile. "Are you talking to me, or to the interesting spot on the table over there?"

A chuckle escapes him, breathy and surprised; he shakes his head and looks at her, dead in the eye. They pause like that, let it sink in, this moment of lightness… and as it does, the momentary weightlessness dissolves like sugar in too much water.

"I'm ok Felicity." He tells her, like he's sealing some bond between them. It feels a flighty truth to her, like he's covering up a lot more. A senseless, baseless need to _know_ crawls up her throat and this time… this time Felicity is brave enough ( _reckless enough_ ) not to fight it. ( _the pure, terrifying truth is that she's wanted to know since she set eyes on him, and before now she's never trusted that feeling enough to voice it. But she's past that. She feels brave enough for the scary questions now_.)

"And before that?"

She'd make a quip about the uselessness of platitudes if his eyes weren't so sad while he said that. There seems to be no end to the feelings in his eyes and they draw her like gravity, pulling at a string knotted right beneath her left ribs, aching. It's fucking terrifying how he commands her feelings with just a look, but maybe… just maybe…

She knows what she's asking here and yes, she's scared but she's also pushing through it.

"You told me not to do that." Oliver reminds her. "Not to hold my feelings over you; and you were right."

"Yeah, because I don't like feeling like my hands is being forced." She explains shortly. She doesn't want to tell him yet how deeply his feelings resonate in her. Let him assume; there's a vague kind of safety in assumptions ( _because there is no doubt in her that to some extent, he knows_ ) "But _I'm_ asking you now. It's my choice, to know."

And that makes all the difference Felicity needs.

However, she hadn't counted on the fleeting grief that crosses his face as he considers how to answer her though. Hadn't calculated that she'd need to hold on tight to the porcelain mug in her hands because the urge to touch him was getting persistent in a very irritating way.

"I don't really remember the first couple of weeks, after. It's kind of a blur." Oliver Queen tells her, looking a little bit like he almost can't believe he's having this conversation. To be honest, Felicity is kinda stunned herself.

"We kept chasing Darhk down and missing him by seconds. I honestly thought I was going to go mad at some point. Kept seeing you everywhere."

Why did she ask for this again? Felicity doesn't remember. ( _She does though. The problem is she hadn't really expected him to answer with this kind of vulnerable honesty_ ) He's looking at her like she might flicker out of existence at any moment and it makes Felicity's skin feel itchy, the way he zeroes in on her face. He's hardly blinked yet, it makes looking away from him impossible, like witnessing a car crash. It's astounding how a man who seems so stoic can make you want to break to pieces if you just take one _real_ look into his eyes.

She shouldn't have asked. _(Title of your autobiography, Smoak. …Somewhere, in some HIVE hole, Tommy Merlyn must be snickering right about now. The thought irritates her._ )

"I remember everything about my first two weeks. It felt like they lasted forever. Why were you chasing him? Revenge?"

There is something unpleasant about the thought of baiting him like this, but can't help it. ( _it's an_ _inherently hostile form of communication - this is a patter she learned to dread in a prison cell with white halls and no furniture; one that she perfected and that now can't seem to escape_ ) the truth however remains that everyone so far has always answer her uncomfortable questions with other questions and Felicity hates it.

Oliver Queen gives her a pained smile. "I'd be lying if I said that shoving an arrow through Darhk's eye-socket doesn't give me a certain… satisfaction. But it wasn't about revenge. I wanted…" He looks away.

Felicity leans a bit forward. "What?" Then something occurs to her and leaves her confused. "I thought you said you didn't know I was…"

Oliver shakes his head. "I didn't." His next words feel almost like he's admitting to something that will get him in trouble. "I wanted to get your body back."

Felicity blinks several times, a hundred different reasons why brushing by her brain at once; from the respect of a proper funeral, to the most horrific one yet that has nothing to do with resting in peace. She meets Oliver Queen's eyes and within that one look, she _knows_. She simply does, and the knowledge makes her want to stand up and pace around.

"You wanted to use the Pit didn't you." disbelief and a vague sense of ( _growing_ ) horror tinges her words. Oliver Queen doesn't deny it.

Felicity feels color drain from her face.

"I can't believe you would…" She turns to him with wide eyes and a sharp anger that is mostly there to mask the fear beneath. "You _know_ what the Pit does and you would have put me in there? That's… that's beyond… I can't even…"

She stops, looks away as she tries to control her flying heart and rapid-fire thoughts.

"I'm sorry. That was uncalled for." Felicity says slowly, almost methodically. "The thought of the Pit freaks me out a little. …Ok a lot. Don't get me wrong, I like being alive, big fan of breathing; but I've seen what the Pit does to people. It scares me."

Felicity finds (to her surprise) that the same fear pervading her is mirrored on his face.

"Yeah it scares me too." Oliver admits haltingly.

And it's right then that Felicity really understands all the reasons why someone would do such an extreme thing. They're right there, stamped on his face. The desperation in his eyes is for one fleeting moment naked and sharp and she can hardly stand to look at him. It honestly feels like looking at the sun.

"How is Thea, by the way?" Felicity asks out of the blue and the whiplash of that subject-change couldn't be more welcome.

"She's doing better too."

Felicity just looks at him for a while, tilting her head to the side. It's impossible not to feel like an insect under a microscope when she looks at him like that but Oliver tries to stamp down on the unwelcome feeling crawling up his spine. Just don't think about it.

"Is she hearing voice yet?" Felicity asks him softly, and watches his eyes widen.

Oliver is staring at her like she just hit him in the face, pale as bone and still as stone.

"No, she…" His voice breaks, so he clears his throat trying to swallow back down his heart. "She never did. It was more like, impulse control for her. She couldn't…"

"It's different for everybody." Felicity hurries to explain.

He almost interrupts her in his hurry to know. "So it's not an escalation?"

Felicity shakes her head.

"I don't know. Tommy said…" she stops when she notices that he stops breathing at the mention of Tommy's name. "He said in the begging it was like madness must be like. And that it got quieter… after a while."

"Did he…" But he stops and hangs his head, biting his lips to keep the questions in.

"You want to know what happened to him." It's not a question. She knows he wants to know. "I don't know all the story, and what parts of it I do know are not mine to tell. You'll have to ask him yourself."

He looks at her from beneath his lashes and there is something that is both tentative and incredibly unyielding about that look.

"You're afraid of him." He's not asking. It's his conclusion and it sounds like he doesn't doubt it. Felicity blinks against that self-assurance, her jaw tightening and lips thinning at the intrusive truth. She _really_ doesn't like it when he does that, but in Oliver Queen's defense, he doesn't do it very often.

"I am." She leans back in her chair. "You should be too. He almost killed you a couple of months ago."

Oliver rolls his shoulder, the still-healing muscles of his clavicle aching. He thinks back to that moment, to those two inches to the left that had made the difference between severe injury and a lethal one. Knowing now that there had been Tommy Merlyn behind the Dark Archer's mask chills him. ( _he refuses to think back to those moments when he'd been so close to killing the Dark Archer and refrained. He can't even go there, because every time he does, his heart seems to forget its function_ )

"Yes, he did. But you still say we can trust him." Because that too, is among the things he doesn't understand.

"I never said that." Felicity corrects immediately. The notions of 'trust' and 'Tommy' taken together are so thorny, so layered and complicated that she couldn't possibly open them without cutting herself – her Oliver for that matter. "I don't trust _him_. I do trust his rage[1] however."

That was a bit too vague for Oliver's tastes though. He has no idea what she means, but he doesn't necessarily need to, to get answers.

"And how safe are my friends and my sister, and you, from his rage?"

Felicity sighs exasperatedly.

"If he wanted to kill me he would have done it a thousand times by now. Same for your friends. And though I wouldn't put my hand on the fire for a lot of things about Tommy Merlyn, I do know he loves his sister as much as you do, because he never made that a secret, and what Malcolm Merlyn did to Thea is probably the primary reason Tommy wants to slice that head off those shoulders himself." She takes a deep breath, takes in Oliver Queen's stunned face and cannot help a small smile that is not lacking in shades of unkindness ( _and she doesn't regret in the slightest_ ) "As for _you_ … well, I'm not sure if he wants to hug you, fuck you or kill you – and I'm not sure _he_ knows either, by the way - but I do think it's no coincidence you're still breathing."

Oliver Queen's face is frozen in the most honest expression of shock Felicity has ever seen, and she might laugh at it, but that the same time she feels like she might also cry at it. It's such a mess really and she's in too deep.

"I have seen Tommy Merlyn shoot the wings off of on inch-long butterfly, at a hundred yards, Queen. He doesn't _miss_."

It takes him a while to pick up his breathing, so long that Felicity thinks he might just go blue in the face and fall off his chair. When he does, he tries to be inconspicuous about it ( _he fails_ ; _she is not surprised. What surprises her is that she feels bad about him. He is starving for truth but he has no idea how to handle it, not really_ ). Felicity doesn't interrupt his spiral, nor does she push when she sees him trying to crawl his thoughts into some semblance of order. She might be a tease and a little mean, but she's not heartless.

"I'm not sure what your point was," Oliver Queen tells her when he finds his voice again. "But if that was your version of a reassurance, please spear me next time."

Felicity can't help a small chuckle. _Deflecting are we. Fine_.

"It wasn't meant to be reassuring. …I never said he'd be the same friend you lost." She reminds him gently.

The little headshake he gives back feels almost practiced at this point. Like he's used to it. Maybe if Oliver Queen were more jaded he might have rolled his eyes, because that little headshake, the deep breath after it, were the silent version of a surrendered 'of course not'. Felicity just looks at him for long moments. He's lost so many people, hasn't he. Some have come back, others never will and it strikes her then, how terribly exhausting it must be, to know grief so intimately that you can mourn someone even when they're breathing right next to you.

A sharp shiver rips up her spine and she stands a little straighter. No she doesn't want to think about it anymore.

They talk a long time. He lets her ask all the questions and answers all of them. It surprises her, how willingly he gives even when she just keeps on taking. Felicity he can't help wondering how long it will last, as she cant help thinking perhaps this is who they are; or perhaps he is manipulating her into believing precisely that… ( _or perhaps she just needs to break out of this ugly struggle and just give in. bite the bullet, so to speak._

 _What do you have to lose anyway?_ )

Until it happens.

"Do you have nightmares?"

"Yes."

"How often?"

He hesitates – just a short moment - then gives in. "Almost every night. Sometimes I luck out. Are you ever going to tell me if there is a point to this?"

Inside, she cowers and crowns in victory at the same time. Finally! _Finally_ , his breaking point! ( _He_ had _to have one… even as the smarter part of her brain sneers at her. 'you know this is a charade; a parody. You knew it all along, who do you think you're fooling?'_ )

"Yeah actually." Felicity says, a little too chirpily for anyone's taste, ever. Oliver merely raises both eyebrows, expectant.

"I'm trying to figure out how much are you willing to give me." She admits, curling her shoulders inwards a bit as she leans forward ( _heart beating against her breastbone like a hummingbird's wings_ ). His only response his a slow blink and then a smile that feels a bit sad, a lot knowing. So do his eyes… and faced with that look, Felicity's stomach drops like a stone.

"Anything." He tells her. Calm. Sure. "Everything."

It's almost a dare. The truth behind it actually ' _How much do you really want to take?'_ And Felicity is the one who ends up shaking on the inside in trepidation – as much for herself as for his misplaced confidence.

"You shouldn't." She warns him. "That's a rookie mistake. You don't know me."

His smile widens, but his eyes are still so sad it makes her own water just a little bit. "It's the other way around actually. _You_ don't know _me_. I do know you."

"You _knew_ me."

"Same difference, Felicity."

"So you think."

Oliver opens his mouth to reiterate but then stops, looks at her as if reevaluating her, and then nods.

"Ok."

"Ok what?"

"Ok, I'll see you the way you want me to."

She gives him a blank look, raising both eyebrows in a stunning display of skepticism. "Really?"

He seems amused with her now. "Yes, really."

"Just because I want you to?" Felicity adds a tiny sprinkle of mocking now to the previous disbelief, as if she's making fun of herself for even suggesting it, and him suggesting she believe it. But instead of reacting with defensiveness ( _or anything else that would have made more sense than his actual reaction_!), Oliver Queen's whole face just… _softens_. From his eyes, to his mouth, to the way it curves up around his words and really, it's hard enough to look at him without him doing _that_!

"Yeah, just because you want me to." And he shrugs her doubt away as if it were nothing. "I want you to be comfortable around me."

Oliver can't help the small smile because her eyes are studying him like he's a baffling problem she can't quite decipher. It's a nice spot to be in, in his opinion: Felicity never leaves anything alone until she has it all figured out. There is a certain kind of reassurance in that. And he has a feeling that the more open and honest and vulnerable he's willing to be with her, the more she will be thrown off.

( _there is the sad reality that she is not used to either of those things in people, but he leaves that alone for now_ )

"I'm never comfortable around you." Felicity says abruptly, jarring him from his thoughts. "You set me on edge just by being in the room."

Oliver ducks his head, lightness slipping through his fingers like smoke.

"Yes, I know."

"It's not your fault." Felicity hurries to add, because she can tell it's guilt that crowds his eyes and darkens his face the moment he looks away from her and she really doesn't want him to feel that way. "I don't know what it is…"

That's a lie too. she knows exactly what it is. ( _Coward_!) She's lying to him and it makes the bridge of her nose burn.

"It's going to be ok Felicity." Oliver tells her. "You'll figure it out, eventually."

Felicity holds back a scoff. "Considering how much this scares me, it might come as a surprise to know that it's not me I'm worried about right now."

It takes a moment, but then he reaches for her, his hand engulfing her shoulder and making her feel it's shape, weight and heat as he squeezes just a little bit ( _a promise she's forgotten the meaning of_ ) and slides his palm down her arm gently. ( _his eyes, his smile, they're downright_ kind _and when his hand comes back to her shoulder, thumb tracing her collarbone shortly because apparently that's the way it is with him, she has the unfathomable urge to rub her cheek against the back of his fingers and palm like a cat_ )

"Don't worry about me Felicity. I'll be fine." He probably reads the disbelief in her eyes, because his smile widens. He speaks so softly she almost has the urge to lean forward to hear him. "I'll be whatever you need me to be."

Felicity takes a deep breath, closes her eyes against all that his eyes keep screaming at her. ( _for all his gentleness, she'd never felt anything more violent than the naked way he looks at her_ )

"Right. And you mean that, too. Of course you do, which is probably why it feels like you're breaking my heart."

And she'll never know if she actually meant to say that out loud, ( _never even knew those kinds of words would ever be able to escape the bite of her teeth, but she has said more ridiculous things in the past so she doesn't hound herself too much_ ); nor will she ever know how far her train of thought really went, because she's so a bit on the wrong side of overwhelmed.

It's right about then that Felicity feels his touch, barely there, at the back of her head. She doesn't have the chance to really wonder about it because the next moment, his lips are on her forehead and everything jars into a whiplashing stop. Felicity's breath hitches, her eyes snap open. She's staring at his throat one moment, blinking fast at his Adam's apple, and gulping for air the next ( _where did all the air in the room go_?!), but all she manages to get in her lungs are the burning scent of him, because suddenly he's _everywhere_ and she feels so small, ( _how did she get so small_? _Why does her skin feel like it's too tight to contain her at the same time_?) Felicity feels her head spin, heartbeat thrumming on every inch of her skin, pulling at memories she doesn't have - and doesn't _need_ , because even without them, she knows that this… _this_ is the warmest, gentlest form of affection she's ever felt. _(she knows it in her soul because it wakes up something in her; something huge and hungry, full of longing and a different kind of fearlessness; but why are you crying_?)

Oliver Queen leans back to look at her in the eye and Felicity finally manages a searing, broken breath that finally feels like it actually fills her lungs ( _he lingers in the air and having him there feels more like a comfort than an invasion this time around_ ).

Oliver doesn't say anything and Felicity _can't_. It gets really quiet between them for a while after that, but Felicity doesn't feel it because inside, she is rattling like an unbuttered-down house caught in a storm.

"Remember how you asked me if I knew who you were?" she is looking at the table and not in his eyes, ( _that same spot he was probably studying earlier, a one-inch-long burn mark that someone made some other time in this kitchen that seems to have shrunk with them in it_ ), because the anguish she knows she'll find there makes Felicity want to wail, even though she doesn't know why.

She feels him nod, lips never leaving her skin, fingers tightening momentarily around her wrist.

"I was telling the truth when I said I didn't. I don't."

Oliver closes his eyes and curves his shoulders in, as if she's hurt him too deeply for words. She doesn't realize what she's doing until she feels the scratch of his stubble against her palm and the rushing breath that leaves him, hot on the back of her wrist. Immediately, his hand comes up to circle hers, to keep hers against his cheek as if he is afraid she will move. And when she feels the softness of his lips on fall heavily on the center of her palm, Felicity shivers, presses closer instinctively. He opens his eyes, looks straight into hers ( _the force of it almost drives her backwards; it peels away every last defense, exposes her like a nerve, in a way that makes her shake on the inside_.) Every heartbeat feels heavy, like a hit to the chest, as if her ribs are squeezing her heart and it wants to escape.

She doesn't realize the tears are falling until they tickle down her chin.

And if this is her last act of destruction, she'd rather take it and risk ruin, than wonder 'what if' a single night more, and look for him in every single person she meets. She's tired of it, of everything, but she's tired of the waiting most of all. ' _Whatever this is, let it find me. Even if it kills me_.'[2]

And with a sigh, she lets got of her last secret.

"But I dreamed about you almost every single night." Felicity tells him. "I still do."

She watches his face change, the meaning of her words sink in as his breath comes short and hope up his eyes and oh… oh it's so beautiful…

His lips fall open with the surprise of it. There is an edge of unspeakable desperation to the way he looks at her: as if she is holding his life in her hands, and Felicity feels herself cry harder, because no, she doesn't have any answers for him and it hurts, but there is nothing she can do to change that. She doesn't remember and the void inside her is all consuming and frightening, leaving only jumbled imprints of emotions behind, good only for hurting.

And god, do they hurt.

Tears fall relentlessly and finally she lets go of that pain, lets it show.

"I don't know what to do. I…" the words get stuck on the roof of her dry mouth. The confession comes in a harsh whisper, as if anything more than that would send the words on the wrong ears. "I'm so scared, Oliver. So scared…"

It's the first time she's said his name and where her words had before rooted him in the spot, those last words snap him into action. A thousand emotions cross his face and solidify into determination as he crosses the distance between them with fast long steps, as if it offends him. Felicity doesn't even think to be hesitate, even though he coves the space between them with two strides and on the third she is reaching for him as if it were normal, like she's done a thousand times even though she remember none of them. He has his arms around her, hauling her into his chest and holding on to tightly enough to make her feel it to her bones. Her arms around his neck, her face hidden at the crook of his neck and she is crying with mindless abandon now, while he holds her off her feet, hands making their way up and down her spine, at the back of her neck and back again, soothing.

 _Safe._

It feels that way as his lips pebble kisses on her hair, on her temples, on her cheeks, even though she can't stop shaking, all the grief and all the tiers she's swallowed down, now unleashed from the loosened seams of her skin… because it's safe…

"It's ok to be scared, Felicity. It's going to be ok. I won't let anything bad happen to you again. And I won't leave you, I promise. I promise."

Felicity sobs so hard she thinks she'll choke on it, holds on tighter, wraps herself completely around him when he lays them down somewhere, feels him do the same. And for the first time since she opened her eyes to blinding white light and the smell of sterilizing alcohol, Felicity feels warm, and surefooted enough to just let go and cry. That she finds that in his arms… that is the least surprising thing to ever happen to her all throughout these insipid nine months.

She cries and if he were any other man but who he is, if he loved her any less than he does, the force of her grief would rock him backwards and he wouldn't have the strength to pick her back up again, because the way she cries… it breaks something in him.

Felicity feels herself being rocked gently, soothed even as each sob shakes her from deep within, feeling like a wench to the gut. she feels herself being held close, forehead anchored against his throat. Feels it when he tells her that it's ok to cry. That she should let it all out.

She does. And in the end, when there are no more tears and in their place there's only numbness and a bone-deep exhaustion, she feels weightless against him; no bone, no muscle. It all melted out with her tears.

"I think I'm in love with you." she confesses in a whisper and fresh tears pour out, silent this time, even through she'd thought she'd been cried out. ( _his heart picks up beneath her heart, she feels it, the rhythm fast and irregular now and she wants to kiss him_ ) "And I don't know how. I don't know how to be in love with you."

At this point, knowing that she's hurt him hurts her more, and she feels like her heart might just burst right out of her, but Oliver doesn't say anything. The hand that is soothing lines up and down her back doesn't even pause. He takes it all in stride, holding her head closer to him, dropping a kiss on her forehead, lingering as his hand comes to hold the side of her face gently, thumb brushing right against the scars on her temple. ( _and Felicity knows that's no coincidence_ ) Something tugs at the edges of her memory and it feels the same way sewing a gash shut does: how the string pulls at the edges of ruined flesh. That is how trying to remember hurts, but that Felicity is accustomed to now. She's always hurting around him, physically, emotionally. It's how she knows her feelings are real.

There is an avalanche inside her that is being held back, and it strains the barriers of her mind every time he so much as brushes her with the tips of his fingers. Sometimes all he has to do is look, and she's there…

She doesn't tell him that. Doesn't _want_ him to know that. It would be useless: he can't do anything about it.

"I'm so tired." She whispers, forehead against his neck, breathing him in. She feels his fingers flex against her nape, the press of his forearm along her spine. "I'm exhausted…"

To the bone, with a weariness that is more than just tiredness.

His words vibrate in her ear, warm and gentle. He hasn't stopped touching her, hands roaming in safe places, never stopping and it feels wonderful. ( _she's been so starved for him, hungering for this with every waking moment without knowing what it was she was craving_ ) Felicity on the other hand has filled her fists with his

"Then rest. Lets rest for a while."

They get up from the couch he'd sat them on. He tries to carry her but Felicity refuses, and when they're in front of the bifurcation of the corridor that will lead them into their separate rooms, she takes his hand and pulls him towards his.

She hates her room here. It feels bare and lifeless and too much like her old room in HIVE for her to find any kind of rest there. Maybe in his it will be different. Maybe she is tired of the grey walls she's bee staring at for days and hopes to find a different shade waiting.

"What do you dream about?"

They're face to face in the same bed and in the closeness of their bodies Felicity finds the kind of relief that feels like a drug. She doesn't fight it. Doesn't want to doubt it. It's exhausting and she promised herself she'd stop.

"Lots of things. Most of the time it's just your face. I never really remember what you say but it's almost always sunny. I like that. I was underground a lot, I assumed I just missed summer."

He smiles. The arm he has around her flexes, like he wants to pull her closer, but he doesn't.

"We spent last summer travelling together. It was nice."

She thinks about it for a moment before asking.

"I have other dreams too."

Oliver can tell just by her tone what she means, and just like that the warm drowsiness is chased from his eyes and he is looking at her stone cold sober. Yes she has other dreams, he thinks. Dreams that make her wake up in cold sweat; that made her believe it when she was told he was her killer.

His heart swoops from his throat and down to his stomach when Felicity opens her mouth.

"Dreams about needles and sword against my neck. About a red room and people dragging me away while you watch. About you putting me in a hole. There are other people there too, and you just leave us there to die." She can feel how his pulse quickens, how guilt shadows his face and fills his eyes. She doesn't mean to make him feel this way, but needs to know if these are just dreams or if they are lingering memories.

"Did those things happen? Are they just dreams?"

He opens his mouth, closes it. Felicity reaches out, touches his cheek and reaches to cup the back of his neck, trying to keep her expression peaceful and open. Trying to calm him into just answering and not making thins more than that.

He tells her about the Count and Slade Willson. How nobody had dragged her from their room in Nanda Parbat, but his betrayal later had probably felt that way. About him asking for trust and leading them into a dungeon.

"You left us there?"

There's no judgment in her voice, no incrimination. It's almost as if she's asking about the weather.

"You weren't going to die."

"But you made us think we were."

He looks away.

"Yeah."

Felicity stays silent to that and Oliver can't help it: he _has_ to meet her eye, even in the semidarkness. She's giving him this look that seems to be somewhere between contemplative and accepting.

"That's cold."

 _It's Monday. This is a pen. That's cold._

Oliver feels his eyes fog up and he has to swallow thickly to speak past the ball clogging his throat.

"Yeah. Yes it is."

"Why?"

Oliver swallows down his heart and tries to keep his voice steady.

"I felt… I didn't think there was another way. I was wrong."

This should feel stranger, but the truth is that she's the most comfortable she's been in ever. What is strange, is how her feelings don't explain themselves to her; how she doesn't own them ( _she doesn't know why using his arms as a pillow feels so comfortable, why having this man's thigh between her own is so natural, why the small puffs of his breath against her face are a comfort, why watching him sleep feels so... real_ ). And how, at the same time, these sensations belong to her, the same way her limbs do, the same way her thoughts do. She is confused and uncertain about a lot of things, but this she cannot mistake.

His arm around her middle feels like it belongs. Night after night she used to wake up clammy and shaky on her legs, look into the mirror and see his eyes staring back and not her own reflection.

This is right. This is hers.

And someone felt entitled to take it away from her.

That anger too, feels entirely hers.

Felicity feels him shift in his sleep, pull her closer, his thigh presses more firmly against her and that tingle... the warmth that pools in her belly and lower, making her tingle from the inside, that too, belongs to her.

She feels herself smile tentatively. This is so uncertain: it's like holding smoke between her hands and hoping to preserve it. She knows instinctively that she should not give in so easily. But another part of her, the part that has had sensations and truths branded with fire on the inside of its skin, whispers to her that this is safe. This is real. It's her home and nothing, _nothing_ will tear it from her again.

Being divided between the two is unpleasant. It gives her doubts she cant afford to have. But for now, with this man sleeping so deeply wrapped around her, holding on to her so tightly, Felicity feels like she can rest, just for a little while. That maybe if she closes her eyes, it won't end, it won't stop. After all, there is the certainly that even if she does sleep, his will be the face she will see in her dreams too.

So Felicity closes her eyes and for the first time in a long time, sleeps without dreams. Without waking. And when she does wake, it's his familiar smile that greets her ( _it takes her a full five seconds to get out of the idea that she hasn't woken at all_ )

Oliver wakes up in that immediate, sharp way he used to wake when sleeping meant sitting target. It had taken him him five months to teach himself how to let peace sink in; how to wake up drowsy and let the feeling linger; it took him a fraction of that time to drill that habit back into him again.

The sun is high in the sky and it's shine only slightly held back by the gauzy curtains. It must be late morning. The clock is going to tell him exactly how late, but its behind him on the nightstand and Oliver is not going to move because if he does, he might wake Felicity too, and that's not something he'll risk just to know the time.

He remembers that there used to be a time when, fresh out of the battle with the League, he used to wake this way and wake Felicity up too immediately, because even though he never made a sound, he would tense and somehow, that would jolt her right out of sleep and into awareness. It took him a while to understand that ever since they met, he never faced any of his battles alone. That his secrets weighted on her too, on top of her own ( _'…so tell me Oliver. The bad things, the terrible things. You don't hide them from me. You give them to me. Let me share them. I love you. You are my heart. What happens to you happens to me_ _ **[3]**_.') Oliver looks at how Felicity is currently in his arms, sleeping undisturbed, and smiles sadly. She must have been exactly as tired as she said she was.

He looks at her and feels his heart hammer against his chest a little harder: she sleeps the way she always has - one hand curled over her mouth, another thrown around his waist, her thighs trapping his between them as if she's binding him to her.

( _She doesn't need to. He couldn't be more hers if he tried_ )

He doesn't want to wake her, but his lips find her forehead almost without thought and he feels the shift of her body a moment later, burrowing closer. With the arm she is currently using as a pillow he circles her shoulders, bringing them chest to chest gently, tracing her spine lazily with one hand. Her breaths puff against his throat, spread over the hollowness in his chest, filling it again, and it's bliss. From this close it's impossible to ignore how more frail she feels in his arms, but he pushes those thoughts away. She is here now. She's here, right under his hands and they'll get through this, together.

Oliver opens his eyes, traces her every feature. Her lips are a little parted in her sleep, just like he remembered, ( _exactly the same_ ) and he wants nothing more than to lean down and close that inch between them. Kiss her again.

God, he missed her… five years living through various degrees of hell had made him think he knew what _missing_ meant, when what he'd been missing was his whole life. He'd thought a year of having her just at his fingertips and not being able to touch her had taught him what all the possible shades of longing.

It had taken a single night without her to turn all that into its head. He'd he misses her in ways he didn't even know were possible to miss someone.

Gently, Oliver rests his forehead against hers, barely touching and feels the tendril of a forgotten happiness pervade him. It expands his chest, fills his every crevice, mending the cracks that had left him bleeding and raw all these months without her. She is warm and safe and alive in his arms and there is nothing, nothing that Oliver can ask from this moment. This is enough, he won't be greedy. He won't. He will be whatever she needs him to be, and it's not even going to be that hard. Felicity had been doing exactly that for years for him. He wouldn't deserve a fraction of that love if he couldn't do the same.

But then her eyes blink open, hazy with sleep, unseeing and he smiles at her, instinctively. And his heart legitimacy _flutters_ in his chest when she smiles at him ever so softly, the way she used to every morning. Her hand comes to his cheek and god, it opens him up to her in a way that its almost frightening. Because this is Felicity, and this is the way she always says good morning, and before his brain can catch up with his feelings, she tilts her smile upwards in invitation, eyes closed and he is kissing her softly, gently, breathing her in, needing her in his lungs more than he needs air. The line between reality and wishful-thinking blurs further, because she opens up for him like a blooming flower, parting his lips with hers as her hand caresses the back of his head, his neck, pulling him closer just as she rolls her whole body into his with the gentlest sigh and Oliver… Oliver is lost. ( _He stood no chance against her anyway_ )

He falls into her touch, into her kiss, with a helpless groan, ( _the rush he feels when she slips her tongue in his mouth, touching his tentatively, is blinding, it slams him into his body so violently he shudders_ ) with the restrained longing of accumulated solitude, and pain and fear and _love_ … so much that it chokes him, it flays him open for her. He feels her hot hand against the skin of his back, traveling upwards; on the back of his neck, his cheek, angling his head so she can kiss him deeper and Oliver feels his blood thicken and his body grown heavy, one word beating in his veins ' _Yes. Yes_!' as he reacquaints his hands, his body with the feel of hers, starved for her skin and her taste to the brick of delusion.

 _Yes, possess me, invade me, I want you_ … _I've missed you_.

She shifts, lets his thigh slide higher between hers and moans in his mouth, arches into him like a bow when he pushes just a tiny bit into her that way. ( _his head feels lightheaded with it, all of it. Felicity and her mouth, the taste of her skin; the feel of her breasts against him, her thighs, her waist and her back… all of her…_ ) She steals his breath and all he wants is more; he wants to be lost in her, swallowed whole. He wants to be claimed and branded all over again and urges her to take him, learn his mouth as he knows hers and mark him…

Their mouths part, his lips hovering close, almost touching as they share breaths. Oliver doesn't open his eyes for a very long moment, chooses to let the feel of her cheek beneath his palm anchor him, as the feel of her hand rubbing the back of his neck settles into him. ( _he's reeling and it feels like being into shock, but in a good way. The best way. His head is spinning…_ ) The haziness of sleep has long since cleared and once he opens his eyes, he watches, fascinated, the stupor of need clearing from Felicity's eyes too. For a moment he thinks he sees confusion on her face and he makes to move away ( _dread dropping in him, plummeting his stomach to the ground_ ) but Felicity doesn't let him go ( _she tightens her hold, keeping him in place, half on hop of her_ ). She is startled and confused, but not afraid.

Oliver takes a deep breath, willing himself to relax into her again.

"Hi."

His voice is rough and low, and he winces at the sound of it. Sleep and lust do not make him sound normal in any capacity. She used to like that but now Oliver can't be sure. Until she smiles at him, that is, amused as a brad new flush creeps around her neck.

"Hi."

They are still tied together, most of their bodies against each other so Oliver feels it the moment when she starts to relax again. It's a process she wills herself to go through, one breath and then another, she closes her eyes, brings her hand from the back of his head to laying it right on top of his heart, and yes, Oliver thinks. _Yes, some things just don't change_. _Please, if there is any kind of god, let this not change._

"I meant to say earlier… I've been meaning to say it for a while actually."

She opens her eyes and meets his look, so utterly open and vulnerable to her, ( _because so far, that is the only think she responds to with stingless sincerity_ ) He doesn't dread anymore, what she'll say. It's worth it.

But then he sees guilt creeping in her expression and he frowns.

"What is it?" he asks, trying to make it soft, not pressuring; trying being the key word here. his voice still sounds like he chewed on gravel.

She bites her lip. "I'm sorry I shot you."

Oliver blinks, tries to hold it back, but honestly he can't _not_ chuckle at that: low and a little breathy. The way he always does when she pull amusement out of him when he least expects it. Because how crazy are their lives, honestly, if _'sorry I shot you 3 times in the chest'_ make it on their list?

"It's ok." he murmurs, kissing her forehead.

"It's really not." Felicity immediately corrects, the hand over his heart pushing him so that she can look at him in the eye again. "I was scared and confused and I didn't know what to do, but I saw that you aimed away the second you saw me. I _saw_ it. And I shot you anyway."

She had. Oliver had been useless in that moment. If Roy had not been there with Digg to protect him, he would have probably been killed, and not by Felicity either. He had completely frozen in the middle of a gunfight; that had not happened to him since he first landed on Lian Yu! But the sight of her there, alive, all in black and Kevlar, planting bombs left and right and with eyes that _didn't know him_ … it had disarmed him in the worst way possible.

And Felicity, she'd pulled the trigger and put three rounds into him.

Oliver takes a deep breath. "Well, then let's be thankful that I was wearing body armor and you weren't sure enough of your aim to go for the head." Or the throat, now that he thinks about it.

Felicity scoffs, amusement lightening her eyes.

"I'm plenty sure of my aim." she retorts archly. The teasing in her voice doesn't take away from the heaviness of total self-awareness in her eyes. Oliver freezes.

"What?"

She shrugs, a tiny movement beneath the blanket of his arms, because no, they haven't pulled away from each other yet. On the contrary, he is holding her tighter.

"I couldn't really keep up with the physical training. Anything more than self-defense is beyond me. So they put me on target practice and I figured, if I did well there, they would stop trying to beat me into a mush."

Oliver feels his jaw tighten, a muscle jumping out. But the coil of anger only lasts a moment, because the heavy setting guilt gives him no quarter.

"Is that why you froze up when Thea asked you to join their sparring session?"

Felicity looks away then, setting her eyes long the frayed collar of his T-shirt.

"Reflex, I guess." She tells him in a murmur.

"I am so sorry Felicity." he says heavily. "I'm so sorry we had to go through that."

But then what she is actually saying, sinks in, and his eyes snap open, suddenly aware. He meets her amused smile - a shadow, a mere flicker of what it used to be, but still there. Still familiar.

"Starting to catch on, are you?" she teases… and watches hope flare in him bright, lighting up his eyes like blue flames.

"You missed on purpose. Is that what you're saying?"

Felicity gulps, amusement dissipating.

"Let's not give me too much credit there. I still put three bullets in you."

"You didn't kill me though."

But now she looks a bit annoyed and pulls back, away from his arms. Oliver lets her go and sits up, for a moment fearing she's leaving. But Felicity just sits on the edge of the bed, doesn't go any further away from him than that.

"I _did_ kill you, Oliver." She says solemnly, turning only halfway so that he can only see her profile. "You just didn't die[4]."

Oliver sits up as well, right by her side, his thigh touching hers. He waits until she decides to look him in the face out of her own volition.

"You shot me in the shoulder, side and hip. Even if I hadn't had armor on, those would have been flesh wounds."

She looks away from him. Gulps.

"I know what you're thinking. It would be nice to think that I did that on purpose somehow, because it was you, but I didn't." Felicity shakes her head and turns her eyes to him, wide and shiny with uncertainty and the hints of fear, of confusion that seems to be a permanent marker on her now. "I just wanted you to know that I don't go around shooting people dead just because they're in my way or something, because I don't. And it matters to me that you know that."

Oliver nods, but beneath that Felicity can see the true understanding starting to take shape.

"Did you…"

His words stop and for a moment he looks helpless and she wishes she'd never said anything to begin with. As it is, all she can do is save him the trouble of saying the words himself.

"I was an active operative for a while. I had targets. Some of them I killed."

Breath leaves his body in a whoosh and Felicity braces for impact. He closes his eyes, focuses on breathing in and out – trying to calm down.

"I'm so sorry…"

"I'm not." And she isn't. Not really. Not in the way he seems to think. ( _the surprise she gives him with those words somehow manages to derail his anger_ ) "The ones that died were horrible people who were doing unspeakable things and weren't going to stop and the world will be a more beautiful place without them[5]."

His thumb traces circles against her knuckles, her hand practically enveloped in his. He hadn't let go for a moment.

"Do you regret it?"

Felicity looks back into those eyes that have known fear and death and rage… and she doesn't lie.

"Sometimes." And so what if her voice shakes a bit? Because there have been times in the dead of night, when all fire and hope was gone and all that was left was nightmares. Times when death snapped at her heels and made her doubt everything and the spaces in between. …Times when she looks in the mirror and sees only razor-smiles and cold eyes, alike enough to hers to make her want to scream. "Isn't it hypocritical though, to want someone dead but not be willing to do the ugly yourself?"

Oliver sighs deeply, his forehead coming to rest lightly against her temple.

"I wish you'd never had to make that kind of choice."

"Too late. Did I ever… before?"

"No."

Felicity looks away. "Does that change things for you?"

Her voice is steady, almost unaffected, she should be proud. Her heart is in her throat though, and horrible dread burns though her insides, heightening her pulse to an irritating pattern.

She feels his fingertips brushing against the side of her face, tracing her cheekbone, soft lips against temple.

"No." He says it so softly that if he hadn't been speaking right against her ear, she might have missed it ( _and her heart falls to the floor and tries to soar at the same time. She didn't even realize she'd been holding her breath_ ). "It changes nothing for me."

All she can manage is a nod.

"Felicity…"

She closes her eyes. She has been reminded of her name many times during these days and the name fits. It feels right. She knows her name. But the way _he_ says it… he breathes it out in complete self awareness, infusing each syllable with meaning and letting it call to her softly. Like he respects every single thing it could possibly mean, in every single way.

 _…_ _like he loves me._

Tears burn behind her eyelids and Felicity keeps them down, takes deep breaths through her nose, waits for what he has to say as she lets her own name slide over her like warm water. She absorbs the fact that she knows, without knowing, exactly what he means to say to her, and she does it without fear. The time for fear is past. She cannot fear a man who says her name as if even if it were the only word he could ever use, it would be enough.

"Felicity, whatever happens, _whatever_ happens - you are not alone."

She opens her eyes, looks at him. Doesn't even need to voice her question; he snatches it right out of her eyes.

"You saved my life so many times, just by reminding me I wasn't alone. You're not either. I promise. You never will be."

Felicity gulps. Nods. She wasn't aware of when exactly their hand slipped into each-other's but the fact is that their fingers are laced together.

She takes a big breath then, one Oliver recognizes as her trying to get ready to face the day.

"We have a lot of work to do." She says that as if to point it out to herself. Oliver nods anyway. She sighs. "I'm gonna be needing a lot of coffee."

"Yup." And he can't help the smile as he gets up and pulls her with him. "It's gonna be one of those weeks."

"Oh, we have those?"

"We do. Often." He adds, ever the precise asshole.

Felicity groans. "No rest for the wicked."

"Nope."

Felicity gives him a look that might be surprise, it might be amusement. "Look at you, all perky and monosyllabic. You're gonna ruin your reputation."

Oliver rolls his eyes. "It's been shaky for a while anyway."

Felicity chuckles despite herself, more at his deadpan delivery than the words themselves. She makes a deliberate choice to step up close to him and it's still tentative but not hesitant anymore, because her mind is made up. ( _if there was a way to describe the look on her face, Oliver would go with curious, like a spooked cat edging towards the newly offered place of milk_ ) She touches the back of his hands with hers and he turns it immediately to welcome her, and its new to her but more fascinating is the way he looks at her when Felicity tilts her face up. He looks at her in a way that makes Felicity feel like there's nothing else he'd rather look at. It's strange how it makes her chest ache and makes her uncomfortable at the same time. She's not used to his focus being honed only on her and he probably notices, because the next moment his face softens with a smile, and after a heartbeat he reaches for her face with both hands, giving her the kiss she wanted. ( _more than she wanted: soft and sweet, lingering on her upper lip and her lower one, fingers tracing her cheekbones, the back of her neck like he was mapping her… melting her against him through sheer sweetness of longing_ )

Later, when Felicity is brushing her teeth in front of the mirror in her bathroom, she makes up her mind ( _even though she still can't stand to look at herself in the mirror too long_ ). She dresses in Thea Queen's clothes and her own socks, apparently, makes a mental note to ask Oliver what she used to wear before. When he tells her about the countless dresses of all colors, she smiles wide and thinks 'I like that'.

 _Entreat me not to leave you, or return from following after you.  
Where you go I shall go and where you stay, I shall stay.  
Where you die, I shall die  
and there shall I be buried._

 _The lord do so to me, and more also,  
If ought but death part thee from me._

* * *

[1] Taken from 'Thor: the dark world' Loki says it to Thor

[2] Adapted from the similar quote by Zora Neale Hurston 'She had been waiting all her life for something and it had killed her when it found her.'

[3] Taken from 'Scandal'; Abby, season 3

[4] Quote from the movie 'Stage Beauty'

[5] Quote from the movie 'Byzantium': Clara says it to one of her victims.

 **End Note** : Sooo, this is the end of 'To rage' (My first ever Arrow finished story, YAY!)

Im really happy to have closed this story! Thank you so, so much to everyone who has read and commented, each and every one of you guys helped me write this thing so if you like it, pat yourselves on the back cause you co-wrote it with me, so thank you. *hugs from distance*

I know it feels abrupt as far as endings go, and sort of unresolved, but that was the point. It was supposed to go in stages: of the team losing Felicity, finding her, of her not being quite there and everyone making their peace with that. There is going to be a followup that will dwell on the development on Oliver and Felicity's relationship from now this point on, (and her eventual gain fo her memories) mostly from Felicity's perspective and a lot lighter in tone. But I'm not going to post immediately because im knee deep in research and work for my OlicityFicBang piece already (a season 3 rewrite with a vampiric twist ;) Wish me luck, i definitely need it)

Also, if you wanna talk or just fail about olicity with me, come on over at my tumblr and we'll have ourselves a party.  
Im yellowflicker09011996 over there.

Thank you, agian, and I hope you liked reading this as much as i liked writing it


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